


Back at the Beginning

by IceBlueRose



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everything is AU, F/M, Just Roll With It, Nothing after season 2 happens, Seriously I think I accidentally gave Sara extra knowledge, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 15:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16935744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceBlueRose/pseuds/IceBlueRose
Summary: Moments before he dies at the Oculus, Leonard Snart makes a wish. A year later, moments before she fades from existence, Sara Lance makes the same wish.Neither of them expected it to come true.





	Back at the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jael/gifts).



> Six months after your birthday, this is finished! So happy very belated birthday, Jael! Sorry it took so long - I actually had a good stopping point about seven pages in and then I got the crazy idea of wanting to do more and it grew. It grew so much, lol. I hope you like it!

_He watches Sara drag Mick out and towards the Waverider and he’s relieved. He’s pissed. He’s sad. He’s satisfied. He’s resolved. Someone has to stay behind and he refuses to let it be Mick. He can’t let his partner down like that. Not again. But he thinks of the future he’s been imagining lately and sighs._

_He wishes they could have found another way for this to end._

**_She watches her past self hold the Spear and she smiles slightly. Her family has fallen, one by one, until it was just her left. Alone. She sometimes wonders if she’s meant to end up that way, no matter what. She looks at the past version of the man she’d left behind a year ago and sighs because she knows she can’t fix what happened but she wants to. She thinks of the way her team died, of the people they’ve lost the last couple of years._**

**_She wishes they could have found another way for this to end._**

_“There are no strings on me.”_

**_“Remember, legends never die.”_**

_He disappears as the world explodes into a blaze of blue light._

**_She disappears as the world around her fades to nothing._**

“If we have the power to change the world, don’t you think we have the power to change our own fate?” She blinked at the familiar words leaving her mouth.

“For better or for worse.”

Sara turned, wondering if this was real, and met Leonard’s gaze, a small smile on her face as she took in the answering smile on his and the warmth in his eyes.

Her breath hitched and it felt like the world stopped for a moment at the look he was giving her. There was a warmth in his expression that shouldn’t be there this soon. He barely knew her after all, which probably meant that this wasn’t real. Just a delusion. 

“That’s a very good point,” Ray said, smiling slightly. 

Sara turned and took him in, alive and well. She thought of the Ray she’d just lost when Thawne had ripped out his heart and wondered if this was some form of punishment for being a horrible captain instead of a delusion. Was she here to relive all of this again? To relive her mistakes? To lose everyone all over again?

She turned to look at Mick and just barely hid the relief that flashed over her face at the sight of him alive and well, glaring down at his gun. It felt like it’d been forever since she’d seen him do that. Her eyes flicked back to Leonard and she swallowed when she saw him staring at her like he was trying to solve a puzzle.

“We should probably go give Rip our decisions, huh?” Ray asked, standing up. Sara glanced at him and took a deep breath, nodding.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” she told him. He smiled brightly and a part of her ached as she remembered how determined he’d been to change things, the look of shock on his face when Thawne had ripped his heart out. She blinked back the tears that wanted to fall as she remembered that moment while he walked out. Mick wasn’t far behind him and Sara closed her eyes, pushing back the grief and shame that tried to overcome her at the sight of the teammate she’d treated so badly after losing Leonard. Was it really any wonder he’d chosen an evil Leonard over them when no one on the team but Amaya had treated him well?

Sara turned when she realized that Leonard hadn’t followed Mick and she hesitated when she found him still in the same spot, watching her with a look that she hadn’t seen in a year since the Oculus.

And she knew.

Whatever this was, delusion or punishment or whatever, this was _her_ Leonard.

“Crook,” she said softly. 

He smiled softly, standing up. “Assassin.”

Her breath hitched over the nickname she hadn’t heard in a year and she fought back the urge to throw her arms around him. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself. “Is this real?”

Leonard moved until he was standing in front of her. “You once told me that dying was lonely.” His lips twitched. “You were right.”

Sara sucked in a breath. She’d gone from watching the past version of Leonard kill her friends to having the Leonard she’d had feelings for standing in front of her. She’d wished for this Leonard when the other had been standing there, smirking at them and making snide remarks about all of them, Mick included.

“Sara?” Leonard frowned as he watched the emotions flicker over her face.

Sara let out a breath and smiled slightly, making up her mind about what her next move would be. She stepped forward and lifted up on her tiptoes, her hands on Leonard’s arms for balance, and kissed him softly. He’d barely had time to respond before she pulled back. “I missed you.”

Leonard stared down at her, a mix of wonder and curiosity in his eyes. “How did you get here? Was it the Oculus? I remember you got Mick out but did the Waverider not get out of there fast enough?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m from about a year after the Oculus.” She squeezed his arms slightly. “We don’t have nearly enough time for me to tell you the story.”

“Later then,” he said.

“Later,” she promised. “For now, we better make sure that Rip knows we’re staying.” She paused. “We’re probably not going to be able to hide how well we know each other, you realize that, right? Even if we try and hide it, we’ll slip eventually.”

“We say we knew each other from before you died. Mick and I didn’t start talking to each other again until I started going up against the Flash.”

“You can say his name, Len. I know Barry’s the Flash. So does Mick and the rest of the team.” She frowned. “Or, well, they did. Damn. That cat’s back in the bag.”

He laughed quietly. “You’ll have to tell me that story.”

“All of it,” she promised. And there’d be no sugarcoating any of it, she swore to herself, not even her own actions towards Mick. “As for the cover story...I like it.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

She’d barely taken two steps down the hall when Leonard gripped her hand and tugged her back and into his arms, kissing her. He smiled into the kiss and tilted his head, tracing her bottom lip with his tongue. She sighed and slid her arms around his waist, her hands clutching his back as Leonard deepened the kiss.

Neither of them noticed the men coming down the hall towards them.

~*~*~

“Where are Ms. Lance and Mr. Snart?” Rip asked. “Or should I assume they’ve decided not to continue on?”

Ray frowned. “They were right behind us, I thought. Maybe they got lost.” He smiled. “I’ll see if I can find them.”

Mick glanced at the hallway they’d come from. The idea that Leonard Snart had gotten lost was laughable. If anything, Boss was exploring. He smirked. And considering Blondie was missing too, maybe she was finally getting that dance. He turned back to face the Englishman. 

He’d wait for his partner right here.

“I’ll go with you, Dr. Palmer,” Stein said. His eyes ticked towards Mick and then away and Mick just knew that he didn’t trust why a thief and an assassin might be missing from the group. Or maybe it was just Snart. The professor hadn’t been eyeing Blondie like she was going to make off with his wallet or anything the way he had with him and his partner. Mick’s lips twitched.

He wondered what they’d find.

~*~*~

Leonard smiled slightly as he pulled back, looking down at Sara. “Had to steal my kiss,” he told her.

She studied him for a moment before her lips curved up in the small smile that she always used when they were alone. “About time,” she teased. “I was beginning to think you were—“

Whatever she was about to say was cut off when Leonard kissed her again. He didn’t rush it this time, keeping it slow and soft. Rather than just letting it be just a simple kiss, he poured his feelings into it in a way he knew he’d have trouble admitting out loud—his hopes for the future he’d been imagining, his worry that he’d screw this up, the fear that this Sara might not want to take a chance on him. Because this was a different Sara than the one he’d watched drag Mick away from the Oculus. He’d caught glimpses of it just minutes ago through her reactions to Ray and Mick and he was no longer sure where he stood with her but he wanted to find out.

And she told him in the way she responded. She let him feel her grief, her want, her hope and he tightened his grip on her.

“Len,” she sighed when he pulled back. She smiled when he kissed her forehead. “I really did miss you.”

He waited until she looked up at him before promising, “No more dying.”

Her smile widened. “No more dying,” she agreed. “Now, we really should let Rip know we’re staying.”

Leonard scoffed. “Hunter can wait.” He knew she was right, they needed to get moving but they only had a cover story in place, they hadn’t worked out at all how they’d both gotten here, and he still didn’t know what had happened in the year she’d lived since the Oculus had exploded though he knew she was planning to tell him later. He didn’t feel comfortable going out there and just acting as if nothing had happened.

Damn it, they didn’t have any plan in place at all. He supposed this was the moment where he’d have to throw the plan (or the thought of one) out the window. For now, at least.

He stiffened when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he noted the way Sara turned her head just enough to see what had caught his attention. They backed away from each other and turned to find Ray and Stein standing there, looking at them with mixed reactions—Ray looked shocked but also like he was about to start congratulating them while Stein looked surprised and thoughtful. 

“You guys know each other?” Ray blurted out, looking between the two of them.

“As a matter of fact,” Leonard drawled, clenching his jaw and fighting not to say anything more. He didn’t open up in front of people and the fact that he hadn’t noticed them approaching pissed him off, especially since that meant he had no idea how much they’d seen. Sara shifted so that she was standing slightly in front of him, making it easier for him to put a hand on her back without the other two realizing. Except, Leonard realized, Stein didn’t look like he was fooled one bit.

“Ray, Ma—Stein,” Sara said, drawing their attention to her. She lifted her chin slightly, suddenly radiating authority in a way Leonard wasn’t used to seeing from Sara. “Could you please go and let Rip know we’ll be right there?”

Ray still looked shocked but Stein nodded and offered her a small smile. “Of course, Ms. Lance,” he said. “Come along, Mr. Palmer.” 

“But—wait, seriously? It’s _Dr._ Palmer,” Ray protested as he walked after Stein, still protesting.

Sara let out a small laugh as they disappeared from sight. “I’d forgotten how important that used to be to Ray.” She turned to look at him, tilting her head. “You okay?”

Leonard let out a slow breath and looked down at her. “I will be.” He took another deep breath and then added, “Sara, we need to keep an eye on Ray at the auction if we can’t stop Stein from blowing our cover.”

Sara frowned for a few moments before she remembered. “The tech. He left behind a piece of tech.”

“Exactly. If we don’t grab it on the way out, then we’ll still have to split the team up because some of us will have to go after Stein’s tech to track Ray’s.”

“While the rest go after the dagger,” Sara finished as she remembered what had happened that night. “If we can’t keep the tech from being stolen, I think we need to make sure Ray goes with Martin and Jax and I go with you and Mick. You won’t have to keep an eye on me to keep me from triggering something and Ray’s more able to talk physics with Marty.” She frowned. “It also might allow me to get to a better position if we don’t get out quickly enough and Savage shows up.”

Leonard nodded in understanding. “We might be able to prevent Carter’s death.”

“Which means he can’t be used as a bargaining chip later on by Savage if they can’t kill him now.” She frowned. “Except Savage was the one that told them that it has to be Kendra wielding the dagger. Carter can’t use a weapon that belonged to her.”

“So if they don’t confront Savage, they don’t learn that piece of information. But if they confront him, Savage kills Carter and then Savage uses Carter’s soul to become stronger and then uses his reincarnation as a bargaining chip so that Kendra won’t kill him in the future. Which means that he lives to kill Rip’s wife and son and history repeats itself.”

Sara blew out a breath as she thought quickly. “Let’s focus on Ray first. If we can’t stop that, then we try to stop Carter from dying by having me go with you and Mick to steal the dagger. And if we can’t stop that...” She frowned. “If we can’t stop that, then maybe we should consider telling Kendra the truth eventually so that she’ll know that Savage isn’t necessary to break through Carter’s brainwashing. Or hell, one of us sticks close to Kendra and Rip on that mission and keeps Carter’s reincarnation from being revealed so that Kendra kills Savage.”

Leonard thought over the various possibilities that Sara had put out there and nodded. There were too many factors to consider for each of them so they’d have to start small. “Let’s start with Ray’s tech and go from there.” He paused as he thought of something and felt like hitting himself. “Sara,” he said. Once she looked at him, he flicked his eyes towards the ceiling to indicate Gideon.

“Gideon’s priority will always be Rip,” Sara assured him. Even when he hadn’t been the captain, Gideon had worried about Rip. “What we’re doing will guarantee Miranda and Jonas live. Because they didn’t last time, Len. Rip’s mission failed. We killed Savage but we didn’t save his family. The Time Masters sent him after Rip’s family and with the Oculus destroyed we didn’t have the needed info to be able to go save them.”

“Shit,” Leonard muttered. “Should we tell Gideon everything then?” 

“It’s something I’ve been considering,” she admitted. “It was one of the things I figured we’d talk about later.”

Leonard wished they had more time to go over all of this but right now, they needed to make sure the others knew they were sticking around. Then it’d be the plan to try and kidnap Savage at that auction. Since Leonard wasn’t sure they’d be able to keep Stein from giving them away, he had a feeling that fight was still going to happen.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s do this.”

She reached out slowly, giving him time to pull back, and squeezed his hand briefly before letting go and heading down the hallway. Almost automatically, his gaze dropped and he tilted his head.

“Stop watching my ass, Crook,” she called over her shoulder, laughter in her voice.

“It’s a fantastic ass and you’re in leather, Assassin. You can’t blame a guy,” he told her, smirking when she glanced back and grinned at him before turning back to face forward.

He definitely wasn’t imagining the extra sway to her hips after that.

~*~*~

Sara allowed herself the briefest moment of satisfaction as she snatched up the tech that had fallen from Ray’s suit, barely breaking stride as she did so.

It’d been pure luck that she’d seen it at all. She had turned and seen Ray take the hit from the other guy’s gun and seen something small fly off the suit. So she’d fought her way to that side of the stage instead of away from it the way she had last time. By the time she’d gotten there, the others had started to head for the exit so she’d spun, making it look as though she was dodging one of the men coming after them and grabbed it before pushing herself to run faster so that she could catch up to the others.

She nodded slightly at Leonard and watched as his shoulders relaxed slightly as the team charged up the ramp and threw themselves in their seats so that Rip could get them out of there.

The moment that the ship had stabilized, Sara unlocked herself from her seat and turned towards Ray, ignoring Rip as he spun in the captain’s seat and shot to his feet in a fit of anger she remembered well.

“Here, Ray,” she said, holding out the piece of tech towards him. “It fell off your suit. I figured we didn’t want to leave any future tech back there.”

“And a good thing you did, Ms. Lance,” Rip said, sending her a grateful look. Having that particular potential disaster averted seemed to have calmed him down slightly. “There’s no telling what Savage and his people could have done with that technology.” He raised an eyebrow at Ray. “Do try and be more careful of losing pieces of your suit in the future, Dr. Palmer.” He sighed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go review Aldus’ notes to see if he knew of something that could be used against Savage since we failed to capture him and you lot gave away what your powers were so we’ve also lost the element of surprise.”

“Could be worse,” Sara said. “One of us could have been kidnapped by Savage. He could have experimented on us or brainwashed us or used us as leverage to get to Kendra and Carter. Just to name a few things.”

Rip stared at her, slightly horrified at the images she’d caused. “Yes, thank you, Ms. Lance. That’s absolutely some of the worst scenarios you could have come up with.”

She shrugged. “Just thought I’d point out it could be worse.” Sara grinned when she saw Leonard smirking at her. Just because she’d become captain in the future, it didn’t mean she’d lost her sense of humor. Most of the time.

Leonard pushed himself out of his seat in one fluid movement that managed to look both dramatic and nonchalant. Sara had no idea how he did that but it was, she realized, something she had missed seeing.

“Well,” he drawled, “I don’t know about the rest of you but I’d rather be anywhere but doing that.” With a final smirk at the room, he turned and headed for the living quarters, smiling slightly at Sara as he passed her. Next to her, she heard Ray make a noise that she’d probably call a squeak and she just knew he was dying to say something. Especially when she couldn’t stop herself from smiling back.

Martin, she saw, looked like he was trying hard not to smile and she couldn’t help but wonder if this development would change his attitude towards the Rogues. She knew that his relationship with Mick had been rocky (to put it lightly) after Leonard had died but he’d confessed to her that he’d once advised Leonard that no one had to turn out like their father. Was the idea that Leonard cared about something other than a good heist already making Martin think differently? Most likely.

Mick was the other one with a knowing look on his face and she knew that Martin and Ray hadn’t blabbed about catching her and Leonard kissing which meant he was coming to some conclusions on his own. Were she and Leonard that obvious this time around or had he done the same thing last time?

No, she’d have remembered if Mick had given her that knowing look and smirked like he was now. Because she’d have given as good as she got.

Rather than frown, she stood and turned to follow Leonard, winking at Mick as she did so. She grinned when she heard him start laughing behind her.

Maybe she and Mick could get to be the type of friends they’d started to be even quicker than before. And this time, without alienating him for the better part of a year.

~*~*~

Leonard looked up when the door slid open to reveal Sara and let out a breath. He still wasn’t sure where they stood with each other but damn if it didn’t give him a thrill to see her standing there.

She’d missed him. He knew that. She’d said so herself. There was the fact that they’d kissed. (And hell, those were some amazing kisses.) But this was going to be the first chance they could actually talk about everything.

She must have made a detour because she was holding a couple of bottles of water which she held up as she neared the bed.

“I figured we should avoid alcohol for this conversation,” she said.

He smirked. “Takes a lot for either of us to get drunk, Assassin.” He paused at the look on her face. “That bad?”

“It...some of it, yeah.” She flashed him a quick smile. “You know, Martin, Ray, and Mick all think we’re having sex in here. At least, that’s what I figure based on the looks I got when I left not long after you.” 

His smirk turned into a rare grin as he imagined it. The professor seemed to have more of a sense of humor than he’d given him credit for the first time around. At least based on the look he’d noticed before he’d walked out. Ray had looked like he wanted to burst out with congratulations or something. Mick...well, Leonard knew his partner well enough to know Mick was going to give him shit for this. And the bastard was going to smirk while he did it.

“Well then,” he said, pulling out their deck of cards, “why don’t you tell me about it over a game?”

She smiled and set his bottle next to him before hopping up on the bed and scooting back into her usual position. “Sure, but first,” she said, looking up, “Gideon?”

“Yes, Ms. Lance?”

“I need you to keep what Leonard and I talk about from Rip for now. Until we come up with a plan and decide if we’re going to involve him.”

“You wish for me to lie to Captain Hunter?”

Sara shook her head. “No. If he asks where we are, tell him we’re in Leonard’s room. If he wants to know what we’re talking about, tell him we’re talking about the team and the mission. Neither of those are lies. But I know you heard me and Leonard earlier so you know we’re somehow from the future and it didn’t go well, Gideon. Doing things Rip’s way ended with Miranda and Jonas still dead.” She paused. “He also ends up feeling guilt not just over that but over the fact that by the end of it all, Carter and Leonard both die. Leonard and I can change that. But we need to figure out if we’re going to work around Rip or bring him in.”

There was a pause. “I understand, Ms. Lance. Your vitals all indicate that you are telling the truth. If it will help Captain Hunter, I will do as you ask.”

Sara smiled. “Thank you, Gideon. Maybe you’d be willing to help us out when we need it? Check on changes to the timeline and things like that?” When there was no immediate answer, she added, “I know what my vitals are telling you but do you want something else as proof?”

“My apologies, Ms. Lance, but with something like this, yes. I think it would be best.”

Sara paused, trying to think of something before she remembered a conversation with Kendra where the woman had wished they’d never found the article about the dagger because then maybe Carter wouldn’t have died and they’d have had more time. “Kendra and Carter are going to find an article in their son’s pocket. It’s an article about the knife that Savage used to kill them in their first life. Savage has it and Rip and the Hawks are going to want it because they learned that anything associated with the night Savage killed them can be used against him. If Kendra and Carter find that article, will you let us know?” She paused as another consequence of grabbing Ray’s tech came to her and she sighed. “Damn it. And maybe stall Rip on going to get it. Last time, Leonard, Mick, and Ray went to go steal it because Savage wasn’t home, he was checking on the progress of what they’d done with Ray’s tech.”

Leonard’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he muttered. He’d forgotten that, only remembered that Rip had been pissed over Savage getting the future tech because who knows what ideas it gave the bastard.

He sighed. Well, looked like he and Sara had just made things a bit harder for themselves.

“Yeah,” Sara agreed before looking back up. “What do you say, Gideon? Do we have a deal?”

There was a pause as Gideon considered it. “Captain Hunter has not given me any instructions for this type of event. There are no protocols for this situation. Therefore, yes, we have a deal, Ms. Lance.”

She sighed in relief. “Thanks, Gideon.” She glanced over at Leonard who was watching her with one eyebrow raised. “One thing down,” she said in answer to his silent question.

He nodded and tilted his head back. “I can’t believe we forgot why Savage wasn’t home.”

“It’s been a crazy five months for you and longer than that for me. I’m not.” She sighed. “But I suppose I better tell you what you’ve missed.” 

He watched as she fell silent, trying to decide where to start and decided to try and give her a starting point. “What happened after you guys got away from the Vanishing Point?” He almost wished he hadn’t asked when he saw the grief she quickly masked.

“Rip decided that he didn’t want to lose another teammate after you...well, after. So he took us back to Star City. Except instead of taking us to only minutes after we’d left like he promised, he took us back to May 2016. Jax was furious because of how worried his mom must be. Everyone just scattered. Mick picked up some random guy to have him be his partner for a robbery. Ray ended up sneaking into the car and being his getaway driver—“

Leonard snorted and leaned further back on the bed. “Raymond turned criminal?” he asked, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice. He felt a flash of satisfaction at the brief smile that appeared on Sara’s face.

“He said he thought you knew they’d become partners and wanted him to watch out for Mick from what I was told later. Anyway, Mick was pissed that the other guy nearly got them caught and Ray got them out of there then they headed back to where Rip had dropped us off the next day with Ray’s device to send out a beacon to Rip because they decided they weren’t done. Martin and Jax made the same decision. Kendra and Carter were still missing.”

“And what did you do before you decided continuing the mission was the way to go?” he asked. He frowned when he caught another glimpse of the grief from before. “Sara?”

“I went to go see my sister,” she said, keeping her eyes on the bottle of water in her hands. Neither of them had reached for the cards yet and she wished for a moment that they had so she could pretend to be focused on her cards. “I found my dad instead.” Her hands curled into fists. “Laurel was murdered in April.” She closed her eyes to stop the tears. She hated this, she hated that Laurel was dead. She’d be fine for days, weeks even, then something would remind her of Laurel and she’d want to just break down and cry.

Leonard froze for a moment in shock. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting but it hadn’t been that. He knew from their talks just how much Sara loved her sister. Laurel was the one that had talked Sara into coming on this mission, the one that had brought her back to life, had refused to just sit back and accept that Sara was dead. Leonard had always been secretly grateful to her for that. He hesitated a moment then put down his water and moved so that he could hug Sara. He may not like hugging people (hell, he’d made it a rule to avoid touching in general) but he wasn’t going to just sit there while Sara fought back tears.

Then again, Sara had become the exception to a lot of the rules he’d set for himself over the last few months.

Sara let out a shuddering breath and dropped her own water so that she could return the hug, pressing her face against his chest as she silently cried.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered once she’d stopped.

“For what?”

“Crying all over you,” she said. “It’s stupid. Laurel’s not dead now.”

Leonard pulled back and tilted her face up so that she was looking at him. “But she was for you. And if you found out in May and you came from...” He paused and looked at her in question. 

“Technically we were pretty far in the past but in our time it would have been May 2017.”

“That’s a year of her being dead to you, Sara. It’s okay to grieve for that.”

Slowly, a smile appeared on her face and she leaned forward again, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. “Thanks.”

Leonard looked down and let out a breath. “Anytime, Sara.” He was a bit afraid to realize that he meant it. If Sara needed a hug or a shoulder to cry on, he knew he’d do it for her.

After another few moments, they pulled apart and this time Leonard simply settled into the spot next to her. “So you decided to come back on the mission.”

“I almost didn’t. I almost stayed so I could help Oliver and the others fight against the man that had killed Laurel but after talking with my dad, I came back. But...” She hesitated. “I mostly came back because I realized there was a chance that Rip had known and I was furious. I wanted him to take me back so that I could try and save her.”

Leonard frowned. “And he didn’t?”

She shook her head. “No. He said that there wasn’t a way to prevent her death. That if I was there, I’d actually die with her and my dad would die the same night as well. He said he couldn’t do anything.”

“Seriously? What if the team was there?”

She shrugged. “He said it wouldn’t make a difference.” 

“And if you weren’t there but the rest of the team was?”

Sara paused. “I don’t know. He said he’d gone over the possibilities but not which ones, just that Laurel couldn’t be saved. We didn’t have a way to try and see if there was anything else that could work because the Oculus is what allows Gideon to check the timeline and get info on what’s changed. Otherwise, she gets her info from papers and things like that. It’s how he checked on Miranda and Jonas afterwards. The news reports showed that they were still amongst the casualties and that we hadn’t managed to save them.”

“Gideon,” Leonard called.

“Yes, Mr. Snart?” Gideon replied.

“When you’re able to and aren’t doing things for Rip, would you be able to run the probability of saving Laurel Lance in April 2016 if the team is there but Sara isn’t? And maybe check for various other scenarios that could let us save Laurel then let us know which one has the highest chance of success and the least amount of fatalities?”

There was a pause and then Gideon said, “I’d be glad to, Mr. Snart.”

“Len,” Sara breathed, unsure of what to say at how he hadn’t even hesitated to ask Gideon for help in saving Laurel. 

“If we can save your sister, we will,” he promised. “Tell me the rest.”

She went on to tell him about how Kendra had left them a clue to find her and the way they’d simultaneously killed Savage in three different time periods and destroyed the meteors, how it had made Savage mortal so that he’d stay dead once they were done. 

“So everyone got a turn at the bastard,” Leonard mused. “Got a certain poetry to it.”

“Can’t say I hated snapping his neck,” Sara admitted. She took a deep breath. “We all met back up with Rip in the same spot and he asked if any of us would be willing to continue working with him. This time to protect history because without the Time Masters and the Oculus, aberrations were going to start popping up and someone would need to correct them. Kendra and Carter decided not to stay. Said they wanted to give being with each other a shot without the threat of Savage hanging over them. But the rest of us decided to stick around. Of course, right when we decided that, another Waverider came crashing down not too far from us.”

Leonard’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Is anything ever simple with this team?”

Sara couldn’t have stopped the laugh that came out at that if she’d tried. “No,” she said. “A man that introduced himself as Rex Tyler walked off the Waverider and pointed at our Waverider and said if we got on that ship, we’d die. He also told us that a future version of Mick had told him to pass along the message that it was specifically 1942 that we couldn’t go to.”

“So how long did it take you guys to go to 1942?” Leonard asked.

Sara raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think we did?”

“Because you were told not to.”

That wasn’t something that Sara could argue with. “It took a few months. Rex Tyler turned out to be a hologram or something because he just disappeared. So we got on the Waverider and for the next six months or so, we were going on missions and correcting aberrations. And then one popped up in New York, 1942.”

“Of course,” Leonard sighed. 

“The aberration basically meant that World War 2 lasted two years longer and one of the people killed would be Albert Einstein.”

“Jesus,” Leonard muttered. 

She told him about how she’d been tracking Damien Darhk and how she’d almost let her need for revenge ruin the mission, how it wouldn’t be the first time. She clenched her jaw, shame in her voice at the fact that she’d let Mick get injured by not falling back when Rip had shouted for her. How Darhk and the Nazis had fired a torpedo to take out the city and how Rip had set them on a collision course with the torpedo and scattered most of them through time in an effort to keep them alive.

“Are you kidding me?” Leonard asked. “And you guys were just supposed to live out the rest of your lives in whatever time period you landed in?”

“Pretty much, although I think Rip hoped something would bring us back together,” Sara said, remembering the recording he’d left for the team. “Nate—he’s a historian that joined the team—went to Oliver and basically told him that Ray and I were in danger which was a guaranteed way to get him to help. They tracked down the Waverider to where it had been sitting for 70 years in the Atlantic and boarded it only to find that Rip had left Mick in stasis in the med bay. Apparently he wasn’t healed enough to survive the time scatter so Rip knocked him out and left him on the ship.”

Leonard narrowed his eyes. “He left my partner on a ship that he wasn’t even sure would take the blast?”

Sara sighed. “He wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t let my need for revenge get in the way. Mick wouldn’t have gotten hurt if I’d—“

“You don’t know that.” Off of her look, he shook his head. “Look, maybe you made it easier for him to get injured. I don’t know. But Mick doesn’t like backing down from a fight if he doesn’t have to so there was always a chance he’d get hurt. It doesn’t excuse ignoring that you guys were losing and needed to retreat but the fact is, Sara, that Mick probably understood more than anyone why you didn’t. You two are different in a lot of ways but you’re both fighters.” He paused. “Do you know what got Mick through the years as Chronos?”

Sara shook her head. “No.”

“His hatred for me. For the team that I’d chosen over him. His need for revenge is what let him hold on to his sense of self even through all the brainwashing techniques they used on him.” Leonard looked at her. “Your need to take out Darhk in the past so that he couldn’t kill your sister in the future sounds a lot like that.”

Something in Sara relaxed as Leonard spoke. She knew this was just the start of how she’d wronged Mick over the last year but, for this at least, Leonard wasn’t going to condemn her. “Mick was the only one that didn’t actually call me out over it,” she admitted. “Ray was the one that announced it to the team and I ripped him a new one in front of everyone for it. Went straight for his weak spots.”

Leonard’s lips twitched. “Yeah, well, that’s something you and I have in common.”

“You’re not wrong. I even called him Raymond while I was doing it.”

As much as Leonard had come to care for the team, he couldn’t help but laugh at that. He listened as she explained about how Mick and Nate had teamed up to track everyone down, snorting when she mentioned they were all in situations where they were about to die when they were found. Ray and a dinosaur, Firestorm fighting against knights ordered to execute them, Sara taking out the men that were about to hang her for corrupting the women of Salem (which actually amused the hell out of him because of course Sara did).

She told him about going back to 1942 again and how this time they’d actually fixed the mess they’d made only to get captured by the Justice Society of America, a group of superheroes that worked with the government. A group where Rex Tyler was the leader. He laughed when she mentioned Mick proudly announcing he was a criminal and she was an assassin that had never been caught. The way they’d had to work together to complete the mission, how Martin was assumed to be the captain (“Because, as Jax said, he was old and white and a man.”), how Martin had frozen up because he preferred to analyze situations and how Sara had stepped in, leading to her being named captain by Martin (“Ooh, _Captain Lance_ , any orders for me?”), Ray giving Nate the Hulk serum (“ _That’s_ what you guys named it?”) and how it caused Nate to turn to steel.

Then came Amaya sneaking on to the ship to try and kill Mick because she thought he was the one that killed Rex and how Nate had simply bumped her on the head when he was in steel mode to knock her out. Amaya agreeing to work with them to find Rex’s real killer.

“What made her realize it wasn’t Mick?” he asked. It only took one look at the way her eyes shifted away from him for him to realize. “Getting soft, Assassin?”

“Mick’s a lot of things but he wouldn’t have just killed Rex. I wasn’t going to let her go after one of my crew because she thought he seemed the most likely to be a murderer just because he admitted to being a thief.” Sara sighed and wondered where that conviction had been later in the year when it came to protecting Mick from the other members of their team. Hell, from herself. She wondered why she’d let herself only see what Mick allowed them to when she knew he was capable of more than what he showed the world.

Amaya had seen it. Once they’d gotten over all their sniping at each other, Amaya had looked at Mick and seen more than just a pissed off criminal who thought of nothing but beer, food, and causing trouble. She’d witnessed it in the way he’d asked Amaya to side with him when he’d given the Spear to Leonard and the others. The way she’d believed in him when they’d fought for the Spear later in that alternate world and how he’d chosen her over Leonard and the look of horror and grief on his face when that other Leonard had killed Amaya. Amaya’s faith in Mick hadn’t wavered even as Sara told him that he couldn’t help them because she wasn’t sure he could be trusted. 

There’d been a time, during this first mission, when Sara had started to see passed that mask and consider Mick to be a good friend. It was the loss of Leonard and then Laurel that had started to change that. 

Because Leonard was right. She could see the things she and Mick had in common and she’d been so angry at herself for leaving Leonard, for not being there to protect Laurel, for not staying behind to protect her dad and Oliver and the others. She’d taken that anger and twisted it. She’d aimed it at Darhk, yes, but she’d also aimed it at Mick. She’d started giving him harsh looks and snide remarks.

And he’d understood, she realized now. Because he’d rarely fought back. She’d hurt him and he hadn’t fought back except for a few times, like when she’d tried to order him to leave Ray behind at Camelot.

She was a horrible friend, Sara thought. She couldn’t claim to be the greatest person but she’d always thought she was, at the very least, a good friend. Someone that was ready to help whenever her friends needed her. Maybe she didn’t always make the right choices but she was there if they needed her.

Except she couldn’t really say that after this last year, could she? At least not when it came to Mick because she definitely hadn’t treated Jax, Martin, or Rip horribly. Ray was hit or miss. She hadn’t been too hard on Nate or Amaya either. It was mostly Mick.

It was a hell of a thing to take a good look at yourself and realize you didn’t like what you saw, she realized.

“Sara?”

She blinked and looked over at Leonard and let out a deep breath. “Sorry, just got caught up in memories.”

Leonard nodded. He’d watched the gamut of emotions run over her face, the two most prominent being shame and grief. 

He had a feeling things hadn’t gone very well with Sara and Mick in the future which surprised him. They’d been friendly in those last couple of months leading up to the Oculus.

Rather than push for answers that he had a feeling he’d be getting anyway, he shrugged. “It’s okay. So, tell me what happened next after Amaya joined up.”

Sara smiled. “I’m sure you’ll be absolutely surprised to find out that Nate and Ray wrecked the ship while we were in the middle of the time stream and it ended up with Nate falling out of the ship and landing in feudal Japan.”

“Christ,” Leonard muttered, his shoulders shaking a bit as he tried not to laugh. “They sound like menaces together.”

“They became best friends. There was a _Star Wars_ marathon after the whole saving George Lucas thing.” When Leonard’s eyes lit up at that, she grinned. “That comes later though. First, let me tell you about Mick and Amaya arguing on whether ninjas are real and how we ended up fighting ninjas which made Mick the definite winner of that argument.”

Leonard couldn’t help but grin a bit as he listened to Sara tell him about what had happened. He knew exactly how much Mick loved ninjas.

Then he heard about how Ray and Nate had had to destroy Ray’s suit and he almost asked Sara to repeat herself. Ray loved that damn suit. That was a hell of a thing, that he’d be willing to destroy it. Next came zombies (what the _fuck_ , nothing normal ever happened to this team) and Mick getting bitten while Ray and Stein worked on a cure despite the fact that Stein was terrified of zombies. Nate running into a mass of zombies while steeled up and blowing them up. Jax and Amaya freeing the slaves that Jax had been chained up with when he’d gotten caught trying to get the plans that Henry Scott had been trying to get to Ulysses S. Grant and how Jax had introduced himself as Henry Scott to maintain the timeline. Good for the kid, though he imagined being in that time period had been hell for him.

And then—

“Repeat that,” Leonard interrupted, narrowing his eyes. “Mick gave Raymond _my cold gun_?”

Sara nodded, biting her lip to keep from smiling at his reaction. She had known he wouldn’t be happy about this part. “He decided that he needed a new partner and Ray was feeling like he didn’t have a purpose on the team anymore without his suit.”

“So he gave my cold gun to Raymond ‘Boy Scout’ Palmer?” Leonard tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Tell me he respected it at least.”

“Well, he wasn’t very great at aiming it. They crossed streams in the middle of the White House. And Mick kept trying to give him lessons on how to be you.” She sighed. “Not that I was any better. Darhk ended up being at the White House and I completely stopped thinking. I pulled a knife on him which is what caused everything to go to hell.”

“Wanting revenge can do that,” Leonard said, thinking back to the times he’d had tunnel vision on early heists that he’d taken simply because he knew his father wanted to be the one pulling them off. It’d been his own form of revenge to get there before his old man had. He’d never actually gloated about doing it—there was every chance that Lewis would have taken it out on Lisa if Leonard had allowed it to be known who was getting to all of Lewis’s potential jobs before him—but he’d felt smug satisfaction each and every time he’d done it. Not to mention a certain amount of glee.

“Yeah, well, Martin called me out on it this time. We had an argument about it while Mick and Ray argued because Mick said that Ray had screwed up by crossing streams and Ray kept insisting that if Mick would just let him tinker with the cold gun, he could fix that. I remember that because even while I was basically accusing Martin of never giving a damn about anyone, I was thinking how pissed you’d be if Ray actually did mess with the cold gun.” 

“Damn right,” Leonard muttered. “Like hell it needs to be tinkered with.”

Sara laughed. “Anyway, Mick and Ray found out that Darhk was making a deal with the KGB. We didn’t know what he was supposed to get but there was this little box that he was determined to keep. It was the State Dinner and we had him cornered but then he revealed that they’d planted a bomb inside the dinner and so we had to split up. Mick and Ray stayed behind to try and find the bomb while Martin and Jax were evacuating people and trying to find the past version of Martin’s wife. Young Martin was on the ship recovering from being stabbed by Darhk when he got a tad too nosy. Amaya, Nate, one of Amaya’s friends from the JSA, and I went after Darhk and his flunkies.”

“Life is never boring with the team,” Leonard said, shaking his head in amusement. “Well, you’re not blown up so I assume you won that one.”

“Yeah, it was kind of sweet actually. Ray kept saying he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t defuse the bomb because it was such an old...something. Hell, if I remember exactly what he said. I do remember that it was Mick that got him back on track. Told him that he’d been wrong in trying to turn Ray into, well, you. That he was Ray Palmer and could science his way out of anything.” It was one of the few moments that she remembered clearly about that night. The other...well, that was coming up. “We’re getting down to seconds and Ray realizes he can cause this surge that’ll disarm the bomb but he’d have to dismantle the cold gun to do it. Mick basically asked what the hell he was waiting for. Ten seconds left and it’s still not disarmed and from what I understand Mick just starts eating one of the desserts and declaring it’s a good way to go.”

Leonard snorted and pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. “And you?”

“I was busy trying to get to Darhk and using my heels to beat up the guy guarding him.” She smiled. “I kicked that ass and then it was me and Darhk fighting each other again. Earlier that night before the dinner, Martin had spoken to me again. He’d told me that I’d been wrong before because he cared about me and he didn’t honestly care about what killing Darhk would do to history but he cared what it would do to me.” At Leonard’s nod of understanding, her smile widened again. “Reminded me a bit of a certain crook actually when he told me I wasn’t an assassin any longer. I was their captain.”

Leonard offered her a small smile. “Hearing that work?”

“It helped, yeah. Same thing with something Amaya told me later. She said when she found Rex’s killer, she was going to have him arrested. When I pointed out she could kill him, she replied that she was a member of the JSA, not some vigilante. And I...wasn’t a vigilante anymore either. I’m not sure what I could be called but I’d stopped being an assassin and a vigilante so, no, I didn’t kill him. But I made sure I got under his skin.”

“How’d you do that?”

This part of the night she remembered clearly. She remembered every single word said. “I spared his life.”

“You showed him mercy.”

“No,” Sara denied. “That was his first reaction too. He seemed amused by it and I wanted to wipe that smug look off his face. I remember what I told him, word for word.” She paused and then continued softly, “I’m sparing you to prolong your suffering. Because I’m from the future, Damien, and I know how this all ends. Your ark, your grand vision? Just as you're about to accomplish everything you desire, your wife is murdered. The love of your life. And in total despair you even try to kill your own daughter. An entire city rises against you and then you die. Defeated and alone.” She turned to look at Leonard. “And I relished in the look on his face when I told him his fate. I don’t care if it’s not something a good person would do. I wanted him to feel even just a fraction of the suffering he’d caused and I used his wife’s death to do it and I’d do it again.”

Leonard tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “No judgement from me, Sara. I wish I could have seen his face though.”

Her lips curved up in a satisfied smile. “It was one to remember.” She sighed. “Then a speedster grabbed him and he got away.” She glanced at him from under her lashes and smirked. “But not before I swiped that little box he was so protective of from his pocket.”

This time, Leonard didn’t bother holding back the laugh. He’d known he wasn’t the only one with quick fingers on this ship but he still loved hearing about it. “That’s perfect,” he said once he’d stopped laughing.

“I thought so.”

Leonard’s amused smile didn’t fade despite how serious the topic was. “So, you got the box and found out there was a speedster running around.”

“Rex’s killer.” She paused. “Turns out he’s the one that killed Barry’s mom too.”

Leonard let out a breath. “Ah hell,” he muttered. Barry was annoyingly optimistic but the kid loved his parents. Hell, Leonard had met his dad in Iron Heights, heard the stories about the beautiful wife murdered and the young son that went on to join CCPD so he could try and prove his dad’s innocence.

Sara nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. After a few moments, she continued, telling him about how they’d gone back to the Wild West and rescued Hex. She told him that Mick’s job had been to start a bar fight and how he’d bonded with the guy until Hex had gone off the books with the plan and it’d gone to hell with Nate getting shot by a dwarf star bullet. Nate stopping the train by himself while they took down Turnbull.

Then came the alien invasion that had caused them to team up with Team Flash and Team Arrow as well as Supergirl. Leonard’s eyebrows shot up when she told him about the message from 2016 and how Barry had gone to another Earth to ask a friend of his for help. (“Another Earth?” “There’s 52 other Earths from what I understand. Different versions of us on each of them.”) She told him about how the Dominators had been able to mind control everyone that had gone on the mission to rescue the president and how right after they’d been freed from that, some of them (“Actually, just all the non-metas minus Mick.”) had been kidnapped.

“I was the first one grabbed actually,” she said wryly. 

“Well, got to give the aliens points for taste,” Leonard replied, keeping his voice light despite the anger he felt at the thought of her getting taken. It was pointless to be angry now when that was technically in her past (or future, damn time travel) and she was here with him.

Sara snorted. “Thanks.” She sighed. “They had us comatose in these pod things. And while we were comatose, we were actually living out our lives in this perfect world. Oliver and I had never gotten on the Gambit together. Laurel was alive and they were getting married. Tommy was alive but lived out of town. Malcolm wasn’t psychotic. Oliver’s parents were alive, mine were still married.” She hesitated. “Do you want to know a secret?”

“Always.”

“I never told anyone but you were there. With me. My day in that perfect world started with me waking up beside you. You couldn’t go with me to the wedding because of some trip you and Mick were going on.” She looked over at him. “Later on I had told Laurel that I preferred women and we both know that’s usually true but my perfect world didn’t have me with Nyssa or with some other woman. I was with you.”

“Sara,” he breathed. He reached out and entwined their fingers, squeezing lightly. While they’d already kissed, kissing now would definitely cause them to go off track and they couldn’t afford to do that. He settled, instead, for lifting their joined hands to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to her hand.

Her hand tightened on his as she thought of those hours before she’d gotten to Star City for Laurel’s wedding in that perfect world. She’d woken up to find herself partially using Leonard as a pillow, had an _extremely_ enjoyable morning with him, and then they had both nearly missed their flights despite the fact that they’d been at the airport already. He’d been laughing when he’d kissed her goodbye at her gate and gone off to meet Mick, who had been shouting for them to go get a room from his spot a couple gates away where they’d be leaving on their own trip. She’d been fondly rolling her eyes because her boys (and damn it, they were both her boys) were idiots. 

It wasn’t until she’d seen Laurel’s necklace that she’d started having flashes. At one point, Sara had pulled out her phone to call Leonard and when she’d seen his picture, the flashes had begun again. She’d seen him with a smirk on his face instead of the smile from that morning, felt the brush of his fingers against hers when she passed him a bottle, felt the heat of his stare as she danced, and seen him waving a deck of cards at her in silent question, felt the desperation and regret as they’d kissed for the first and last time. It’d shaken her so badly that she’d shoved her phone back into her pocket.

Learning that none of it was real, remembering that Laurel and Leonard were both actually dead, and that she had, in fact, gotten on the Gambit with Oliver and betrayed her sister...

It’d been devastating. Except there’d been no time to dwell on that and so she’d shoved it to the side and never mentioned that her perfect world had included a relationship with Leonard and a close friendship with Mick.

Sara took a deep breath. It wasn’t the time to focus on that. “We managed to break through the delusion and ended up having to fight lookalikes of past enemies to get through. I’m going to make a long story short because there was also a point where Mick, Nate, and a couple others went back to the 50s and got captured by the government along with one of the Dominators and Mick was not happy that he was rescued by Cisco and Felicity—“

Leonard snorted. “He was rescued by Cisco Ramon and Felicity Smoak?” He smirked and shook his head. Oh, he wished he could give Mick hell for that one. It’d probably been hilarious.

Sara grinned. “Yup. Anyway, the Dominators told them that they’d leave Earth alone. All we had to do was give them Barry.” 

“What the hell would they want Barry for?”

“He was the first meta. The Dominators had deemed that Earth wasn’t much of a threat until the Flash appeared. Humans with such advanced powers? They couldn’t allow that.”

“Hell,” he muttered.

“And Barry was all set to hand himself over.” 

Leonard sighed. “Of course he was.”

“He felt we’d be better off without him after the revelations from earlier.” She sighed. “You see, Jax and Martin had found a message in this secret compartment of Rip’s when they were exploring the ship further. The message was from a future Barry telling Rip that there’d be a time where we’d be going to war with the Dominators and that the Barry of the present time couldn’t be trusted.”

“Why not?” Leonard asked, frowning.

“It was referred to as Flashpoint,” Sara told him. “Barry was going up against Zoom, an evil speedster—“

“Does Central City just have a factory that produces them?” Leonard groaned.

Sara laughed. “He was from Earth-2 actually.” Off of Leonard’s look, she nodded and then grew serious. “He killed Barry’s dad right in front of him. So Barry decided to fix it. Except he went further back. He went back and stopped his mom from being killed and it apparently changed everything. After a few months in that world, he realized that he needed to change it back so he went back _again_ and this time stopped himself from stopping the murder. It was actually his creating Flashpoint and then reversing it that got the Dominators’ attention if I remember right.”

Leonard ran his free hand over his face. “This just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, just wait,” Sara told him. She sighed. “We found out about Flashpoint because Cisco forced Barry to tell us. He overheard Jax and Martin asking Barry about the message on why he shouldn’t be trusted and Barry was asking them to keep it quiet until after. Cisco got pissed and basically announced it in front of us and, well, none of us went easy on him.” She shook her head. “I was definitely a hypocrite for that conversation. Hindsight sucks.”

“You guys got mad because he changed time?” Leonard asked, raising an eyebrow.

“More like the results of it,” Sara sighed. “I don’t know if there were more repercussions other than what came out right then but the ones we heard? Pretty big. You remember Caitlin Snow?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Mick and I kidnapped her once.”

She snorted. “Well, be glad you did it before Flashpoint. Before, she was just a regular human. Barry reversing Flashpoint turned her into a meta. She got these ice powers and apparently as a meta, she’s evil. Basically becomes this whole other person and goes by Killer Frost.” 

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. She was wearing something to suppress her powers.” She paused. “Do you remember what I told you about Digg and his baby?”

“Baby Sara,” Leonard said immediately, remembering the look of wonder she’d tried to hide over the fact that John Diggle had named his daughter after her. “Yeah. He and his wife named her after you to honor his friendship with you after you died.”

Sara let out a shaky breath. “I...I don’t remember that,” she admitted. “Because after Flashpoint, there was no baby Sara. Digg had a son that they named John Jr. JJ for short.”

Leonard straightened to stare at her. “Are you telling me that Barry managed to _erase a baby_?”

“Pretty much, yeah. You could argue he just changed her gender but, yeah, he basically erased baby Sara. Obviously he didn’t know that had happened. Apparently he found out when he went to go visit Felicity and saw the picture of JJ.”

“Still,” Leonard said with a frown. “It doesn’t change the fact that she used to exist and then she didn’t.”

“No,” Sara agreed. “It doesn’t.” She shook her head. “I don’t even remember if I met her, you know? I want to say I would’ve met the baby named after me but I can’t say for sure.”

“You had,” Leonard said, aching a bit at the lost expression on her face. “You had. You said she was adorable and apparently she got pretty attached to you the couple times you got to see her.”

Sara let out a breath. “Oh.” She swallowed. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse because I don’t know if there’s a way to stop Flashpoint from happening and if it does, I’ll still never meet her but I’ll wonder.”

He squeezed her hand in a silent apology. “Were those the worst?”

“No, there was one other major thing,” Sara said. “The reason Cisco was so angry at Barry for Flashpoint. Did you know Cisco had a brother?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I maybe kidnapped him and used him and his continuing good health to force Cisco into telling me who the Flash was.”

Sara knew she should probably be telling him off for that but she couldn’t help but smile when she shook her head. “Maybe kidnapped him?”

“Okay, definitely kidnapped him. Lisa helped. It was a family bonding moment.”

Sara slapped her other hand over her mouth in an attempt to stop her laugh. It was such a...Leonard response. He never apologized for his past. You either accepted it or not. After a few moments, she sobered and blew out a breath.

“He was alive before Flashpoint,” she told Leonard. “He wasn’t alive after it.”

Leonard tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “Ah hell,” he muttered. He might like messing with Ramon and he obviously hadn’t had a problem with threatening his brother in the past but for it to be a friend that had caused the circumstances leading to his death? That was a hell of a thing to deal with. He sighed. “Well, I can see why everyone was pissed off.” He glanced over at Sara and, off of her look, added, “Look, I can see the part about it being hypocritical to get mad at him. This mission with Savage is about changing time and, for Rip, saving his family. But it’s also saving the world. And you did try to kill Darhk in the past to save your sister but you stopped yourself. You let him live.”

“Okay.” Sara tilted her head. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“But,” Leonard said, “what I think you’re overlooking when calling yourself a hypocrite is that if Barry’s first instinct was to run back and change things then that means he already knew that he could do it. Which means he’d already run to the past before and that might not have been the first time he’s changed the timeline. It’s just the first time you guys found out about it.” He shrugged. “Barry’s a good guy, I won’t deny that. But even the good guys can make the wrong choices. So we don’t know if he’s changed things before or not. All we know is something went wrong enough this time that he felt the need to change it back.”

Sara let out a breath. She hadn’t actually thought of it that way. After a few moments, she smiled at him. “Thanks.”

He smiled slightly. “You were too close to it. Since I wasn’t there...” He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “So, he thought everyone would just let him hand himself over because they were pissed, huh?”

Sara smiled knowingly over the sudden change of subject. “He did. The teams stopped him. It was actually Mick pointing out that you don’t leave your crew behind that got him moving if I remember right.” She glanced at him and then continued, “Anyway, Barry was convinced to stay and fight instead of giving up. Then Martin showed up with the solution of how to incapacitate the Dominators.” She smirked, knowing her next words would be a shock. “He’d gotten it from his daughter.”

Leonard’s eyebrows shot up. “Stein has a _daughter_?”

“Well, not right now, he doesn’t.” She watched as his eyes narrowed before he smirked and shook his head. “Figured it out?”

“What did he change that gave him a daughter?”

“Remember how I told you young Martin got stabbed because he was nosy while we were in the 80s?” When he nodded, she continued, “Well, apparently the night he got stabbed was Clarissa’s birthday. He had decided getting the info was more important than that and ditched her. Martin was pretty pissed when he realized what his younger self had done. Apparently he gave himself some marital advice that led to him being around more and ta da! Lily Stein exists and is quite the chip off the old block considering she was the one that figured out how to make the devices that we used on the Dominators.”

“Damn,” Leonard said after a few moments. 

“Yeah, Martin didn’t tell us it was her back then. I think he was afraid of what we’d do. And I can’t say I reacted all that well when I did eventually find out. Though to be fair, we’d been kidnapped by the Reverse Flash and he told me while we were waiting to see which one of us they were going to torture,” she mused. “I wasn’t happy about it after though either.”

“Tortured?” What the hell had happened in just the one year? 

She sighed. “I’ll get to that in a sec. But, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, I think we should maybe find a way to make sure Lily Stein does end up being born.”

Leonard frowned. “Because of the Dominators?”

Sara nodded. “We’d have lost without her devices, Len. We hadn’t come up with a way to hit them all at once before Martin showed up with the one device and then they replicated it. Yeah, at first I thought of her as an aberration. An anachronism. But the Dominators are going to come because of the fact that Barry is the Flash, with or without her. It’s because she exists that we win. I don’t think Martin created an anachronism by causing Lily to be born. I think he corrected the timeline.”

“Because before that attack, the Dominators didn’t turn up until the future with Savage,” Leonard said, remembering why the Time Masters had told Rip that Savage was being allowed to gain power.

“Exactly,” Sara agreed. “But if we can’t stop Flashpoint—and beyond finding a way to stop Zoom from here, save Henry Allen, or trying to just tell Barry not to do it, I can’t see how to stop it—then we’re going to need her if we want to beat them again.”

Leonard sighed. “So we might need to let the events leading up to Flashpoint play out depending on what we’re able to do with our mission. And if that happens, we need to make sure that the professor becomes the proud father of a bouncing baby nerd girl.”

Sara laughed. “Yes, exactly.” 

“Okay, so Lily Stein needs to be born. We’ll figure it out.” He squeezed her hand. “You guys beat the aliens,” he prompted.

“Yeah.” Sara grinned. “Kara—that’s Supergirl—and Barry had this competition to see who could get more of the devices on the Dominators faster. I still don’t know who actually won that one but I swear those two together, Len. It’s like watching two puppies chase each other. Or like two rays of sunshine beam at you. At one point they devoured I don’t even know how many donuts and since Kara seemed to have a soft spot for Mick, he got some of them.” She grinned. “He called her Skirt and told her to call him.”

Leonard fought back a grin. “Well, if Mick can handle the two of them together, I’m sure I can.”

Sara smirked. “Can you handle the two of them in the same room as Ray?” She laughed at the slight look of horror that appeared on his face. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Anyway, after that, we actually got awards from the new president and anyone that had a criminal record was pardoned for their defense of Earth.”

“Now there’s something that could come in handy,” Leonard muttered.

“You’d have loved the next place we went,” Sara said. When he lifted his brows in silent question, she told him, “Chicago, the ‘20s, a couple years after Capone had taken over the city.”

“Oh come on,” Leonard groaned, unable to keep the whine out of his voice though he’d deny it if asked. “I missed all the best missions.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a fun one,” she conceded. “Though Amaya did steal some booze for her and Mick to share and she told me that Mick introduced them as Bonnie and Clyde.” They exchanged a quick smile over that as they both remembered Sara’s words to Leonard when he’d tried to convince her to leave the team behind. Despite the situation, the words were funny now when they thought of Mick using the names for Amaya and himself.

She continued and explained how Malcolm Merlyn had joined with Darhk and Thawne, how they had taken her and Stein (“That’s when he told me about Lily.” “Talk about timing, Professor.”), the deal that Malcolm had offered her, and how she’d later given them the amulet that they wanted in exchange for Stein’s location once they realized that Thawne had been impersonating him. Leonard nodded in understanding. He could understand the frustration in having to make that decision—especially since she’d had Merlyn pinned—but he agreed with the choice she’d made.

An amused smile appeared on her face after describing that mission. “And now we’re at the mission involving George Lucas.”

Leonard settled back. “This should be good.”

He listened as she explained that it was Amaya that had figured out that the two amulets that Thawne and the others (“Nate nicknamed them the Legion of Doom. I refuse to call them that.” “I don’t know, Assassin, it has a certain ring to it.” “Wipe that smirk off your face, Snart.”) had taken actually created a medallion that would lead them to the Spear of Destiny (“I still prefer the Holy Lance as its name.” “Of course you do.”). It was at this point that Sara explained what the spear could do.

Leonard let out a low whistle as he thought about it. Something that could rewrite reality. He couldn’t even imagine what he’d do with that—he liked who he was but, if he was honest with himself now, he’d have probably had his father die when Lisa was a baby. Maybe, just maybe, their lives ( _Lisa’s_ life) would have been better if that had happened.

But then he probably wouldn’t have met Mick, would he? He didn’t know. Maybe he’d have ended up in juvie anyway but there was no way to guarantee that. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t have become a criminal at all and that was the very thing that had led to Rip recruiting him which led to him getting to know Sara.

“Not sure I’d want a chance to rewrite reality,” he decided after thinking about it a few moments. He caught a glimpse of her expression before she cleared any emotion from her face and narrowed his eyes. “What?”

She pressed her lips together before shaking her head. “It’ll come up near the end,” she told him. 

He studied her for a few moments, debating on whether he should push for an answer now but Sara had kept her promise each time she’d told him something would come up later so he simply nodded instead. “Okay.”

Sara let out a breath. She wasn’t looking forward to telling him about his past self. Especially since even Mick had been thrown by how ruthless that Leonard had been.

She honestly couldn’t say that Thawne and the others hadn’t figured out a way to mess with his head.

But they’d have to get to that later.

Instead, she explained how Darhk and Merlyn had murdered a guy that was supposed to invent something new for motorcycles and had used League techniques when they had which is how she and Nate had been able to figure out where the three of them had ended up after Chicago. She told him about how they’d found Rip almost by accident. They’d tracked Darhk and Merlyn to a film school and had followed a sign that said _Legends_ only to find that Rip was there as a film student with George Lucas as his assistant. 

“I’m sorry, did you just say that George Lucas was Rip’s _assistant_?” Leonard interrupted.

“Well, I don’t know if that was exactly it. He was helping Rip on his film though. Which was a film about a team known as the Legends going up against a villain named Savage and going after the Spear of Destiny. The characters were based off of us—“

“I better have been played by someone fantastic.”

Sara laughed. “I have no idea if you were. Rip believed his name was Phil and that he was an American film student and thought Rip Hunter was nothing but a character he made up.”

Leonard’s shoulders shook from holding back his laughter. Phil. He wished he could have seen it.

“We sort of got him arrested,” Sara said and Leonard gave up on trying not to laugh.

“So then Martin, Mick, and I pretended that Martin was his psychologist and that he was delusional so we could get him out of jail.” She paused as Leonard snorted. “Mick had to knock him out so we could get him out of there and we barely made it because Darhk and Merlyn showed up. It wasn’t long after that that we found out that George Lucas had been so scared by Darhk and Merlyn that he’d dropped out of film school which meant there was no _Star Wars_ to inspire Ray to become an inventor and no _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ to inspire Nate to become a historian. So the two of them along with Amaya went to go convince him not to drop out. Ray told me later that they actually seemed to have inspired bits of _Star Wars_.”

Leonard raised an eyebrow. “How?”

“Amaya apparently told him that he was their only hope when she was asking him to help save the future by staying in school. And then they ended up in a trash compactor so I think you can imagine what scene came from that.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Leonard muttered. 

“Well, it hasn’t happened yet,” Sara reminded him. “And it might not now.”

Leonard nodded. “So did you guys fix Rip? Was it time drift or something else?”

“Something else,” Sara sighed. “We got him on the ship and Gideon said his entire brain had been rewritten basically. Then we had to go rescue the others but Martin and Mick weren’t able to join.” She frowned. “I don’t know the details but later on I was pretty pissed so I asked Gideon. All she’d tell me was that they’d discovered the Time Masters put a chip in Mick’s head so she and Martin teamed up to operate on him. Which is why, when Jax and I went to find them to join us, Martin told us that they were busy doing brain surgery.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what the chip did. Gideon didn’t tell me and Martin had been sworn to secrecy by Mick. And after what had happened, I didn’t push,” she admitted.

Leonard frowned. “What happened?”

“Thawne managed to take Rip. We were fighting Darhk and Merlyn and we were doing pretty well until Thawne showed up and knocked us on our asses and grabbed the medallion. Ray and the others had gotten Rip’s piece of the spear which they wanted, of course. Then Rip showed up and he had the coat on and was acting like Rip.” Her lips twitched. “Acting being the keyword there. His gun wouldn’t fire and so he just started shouting at Gideon to fire everything. I managed to grab the medallion, we still had Rip’s piece of the spear, but when we were running to the ship, Rip fell behind. I thought he was right behind me but then I turned once I’d gotten on the ship and he hadn’t even hit the ramp yet. Thawne grabbed him and ran off. Jax stopped me from going after them.” She sighed. “We had to leave.”

“You got the spear and the medallion though,” Leonard pointed out.

“Funny, that’s what Jax said. Right before he pointed out that if there was anyone that was going to be capable of getting Rip back while keeping those safe, it was me.”

Leonard made a note to encourage the kid more. It was pretty obvious that being protected wasn’t allowing him to grow but letting him have more responsibility seemed to have helped him out a hell of a lot. “Sounds like he got pretty smart,” he said.

She smiled. “He’s always been smart. He just started stepping up more once we stopped treating him like a kid. And we did eventually get Rip back but we lost his piece of the spear so no, that didn’t work out actually.” She blew out a breath. Talking about the other time she’d died wasn’t going to be fun. “We’ll get to that. But, first, the other thing to know is that we ended up picking up Martin’s daughter from 2017 and she...well, basically she and Ray teamed up and downloaded the medallion into Gideon’s...brain. That way she could use it to track down the other pieces of the spear.”

“Stein’s daughter stay with you guys?”

“No, we dropped her back in 2017 on the same day that we picked her up from,” Sara said. “After that, we discovered another aberration. One that was just as much of a trap as Chicago had been but it was one we couldn’t ignore.”

“What was it?”

“They went back to Christmas of 1776 and murdered George Washington.”

Leonard shook his head. “So no sneak attack across the Delaware, no United States, or anything like that,” he summarized. Off her look, he shrugged. “I like history.”

She smiled. That wasn’t something that had ever really come up in their talks before. “Noted,” she told him. “Well, obviously, we had to go back.”

“Miss Lance, I’m sorry to interrupt but I thought I should let you know that Miss Saunders and Mr. Hall have found the article. I have stopped them from approaching Captain Hunter by telling them that telling him about the article and the dagger now will result in Vandal Savage escaping and one of them dying. I felt it the most likely way to convince them to wait,” Gideon said.

Sara let out a breath. “Thank you, Gideon. Do you believe they’ll wait?”

“I do. Miss Saunders was quite shaken at the idea that one of them might die tonight and Mr. Hall suggested they work on her memories as a way to distract her. I have told them that I will notify them when it’s time to let Captain Hunter know about the dagger.”

“You’re the best, Gideon,” Sara sighed.

“I won’t argue that, Miss Lance.”

Sara laughed as Leonard smirked. “Modest too,” she added. She tilted her head. “Ready to hear about 1776?”

Leonard waved his free hand at her. “Continue, Lance.”

She snorted and shook her head. “It wasn’t too bad to start. Things seemed to be going well at first.”

“Which means that when they went to hell, they went to hell _spectacularly_ ,” Leonard drawled.

Sara thought of the hazy feeling of a hand around her neck before everything went black and let out a breath. “You’re really not wrong,” she told him. “Mick and I had gotten to Washington. Ray was staying small in case we needed the element of surprise. Nate and Amaya were also working the party, looking for Washington at first. Then it turned into a fight when the party was attacked and the soldiers had guns that were definitely from the future. Mick and I had to hold Washington at gunpoint to get him to leave.” She paused. “That’s when Rip showed up. He stepped in our path and he was Rip again.” She took a deep breath. “Mick and I didn’t even notice anything was off with him. Hell, I stepped towards him.”

Leonard squeezed her hand when she stopped. “What happened, Sara?”

“Thawne and the others had done something to Rip. He was still Rip but he just didn’t care about anything or anyone anymore,” Sara told him. “He shot me.” She turned to look at him. “In the gut.”

Leonard’s hand tightened on hers and he clenched his jaw. “Did Mick take him down?”

“Mick caught me so I wouldn’t land in the snow. I don’t...I don’t remember much of what was said. I remember before he shot me, Rip said hello to me. He said goodbye right after he shot me. Mick caught me and was shouting at him and then it turned out that Rip wasn’t alone because he had his men take Mick and Washington. He left me there. I assume it was because he thought I’d bleed out before anyone could find me.”

“Fuck, Sara,” Leonard muttered. He let his eyes roam over her as if to reassure himself that she was there and unharmed.

Sara turned to face him a bit more fully. “I’m fine now. I made it back to the ship where Jax and Martin were waiting.” She shook her head. “Of course, this is where it gets bad again.”

“Joy,” Leonard deadpanned.

“Rip had taken out the ship and anything else electronic in the area with an EMP. So Ray was still small, we didn’t have Gideon, there was pretty much no power on the ship. Once they got me on the ship, it turned out that Nate and Amaya had returned. So they went after Mick. I made Jax captain and first thing he did other than telling Nate and Amaya to go after Mick was tell Martin to get to work on me. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise you that Rip showed up for our piece of the spear while Martin had me in the med bay.”

Leonard looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Please tell me he didn’t get on the ship.”

“Oh no, he managed it. Jax told me that he was leading Rip on a total goose chase throughout the ship while Martin was fixing me up.” Her lips twitched as she remembered the proud look in Jax’s eyes when he’d told her about it. “But then Rip figured out that I’d made it back to the ship. And what better leverage than an injured teammate? Martin said that Rip knocked him out from behind. Jax had realized where Rip was going and showed up to find Rip with his gun in one hand and his other hand around my neck.”

Leonard closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that he couldn’t murder Rip. Yet.

“He strangled me. I was mostly unconscious so I don’t know exactly what was said except for what Jax told me after but I remember that much.” Her free hand drifted up to her neck briefly before she caught herself and deliberately lowered it. “Jax got him to stop by admitting he knew where our piece of the spear was hidden. Said he’d tell Rip as long as he stopped hurting me.”

That was all well and good but Leonard had a feeling that Rip hadn’t stopped there. His hand clenched around Sara’s as her next words proved him right.

“As soon as Jax told him what he wanted, Rip slammed his fingers hard enough into my windpipe that...well.” She blew out a breath. “Snap.” She turned her head so that she could meet his gaze. “And then he took the piece of the Spear we had and left.”

“Rip killed you,” Leonard said, trying to wrap his mind around that. He may have been on the team for less than a year before the Oculus but it had been enough time for him to see that Rip had developed a soft spot for Sara. The idea that the man could simply kill her and walk away like it was nothing was something he would never have considered. 

At the same time, he was furious. With Rip for killing Sara. With himself for not being there. He wanted to leave the room and hunt down Rip and punch him in the face and that was just a start but he also knew he couldn’t do that. This Rip hadn’t done anything to Sara except tell a lie about being a legend. 

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Martin and Ray were the ones that saved me. With Gideon’s help, of course. Ray got the power to come back on with Martin’s help and Gideon was the one that realized that even though my heart had stopped, my brain cells were still active so she could still heal me.”

He wanted to say so many different things but even with Sara, he couldn’t quite bring himself to be that open. He settled instead for a deliberately exasperated, “I suppose this means I need to be nicer to Raymond now.”

Sara smiled knowingly. “Maybe just give him one free day of no insults.”

“I’m not even sure I’m capable of that, Sara.”

Sara laughed a bit. “Well, I hear it’s the thought that counts anyway.”

“Then I’ll just think about how he could have a day with no insults but I’m going to let them fly the second I see the perfect opportunity.” His lips twitched when Sara snickered and shook her head. “Now what happened next?”

Sara frowned as she thought back. After she’d died, their next big mission had been... “Camelot,” she said.

Leonard stared at her. “Camelot,” he repeated.

She nodded. “Camelot,” she confirmed.

“As in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin, and Guinevere? That Camelot?”

“That’d be the one.” She smirked at him. “And you’re talking to Lancelot, by the way.”

Leonard couldn’t have stopped the short burst of laughter from escaping if he’d tried. “Sara, did you have an affair with the Queen of Camelot?”

“No,” she said. “But I spent a good portion of my time there flirting with her and fighting by her side and then I gave her a very nice goodbye kiss.”

He laughed again, shoulders shaking. “I’ll bet you did. So why did you guys have to go to Camelot?”

“A piece of the Spear of Destiny was hidden there. It turned out that Rip had split up the pieces by giving one to a few members of the JSA and then dropping them off at various points in the timeline. That algorithm of Lily’s had tracked one piece to the future and we went there first. When we got there, Dr. Mid-Nite was dead and his piece was gone. From inside of him from what we could tell.”

“Damn,” Leonard muttered. 

Sara nodded. “Gets worse,” she told him. “He’d written the name of his killer using his own blood in his dying moments.” She looked at him. “It was Rip.”

Leonard swore. What the hell had those Legion bastards done to Rip? Because Hunter was a lot of things but a stone cold killer? Not one of them. Oh, Leonard knew the man could kill when he needed to and he had no doubts that Rip would be happy to kill Savage but this Rip that he was hearing about was something else altogether. Hell, even knowing what baby Hitler would become hadn’t stopped Rip from allowing the kid to live in order to save Sara.

“Amaya was furious, for good reason. But she was more furious with me when I refused to consider killing Rip.” She sighed. “It wasn’t just that he’d been one of us or that he’d brought us together. I had to think about the big picture and we needed Rip. He knew where the other pieces of the Spear were hidden and he might be able to lead us to Thawne and the others.” 

“She wasn’t happy to hear that, I’m guessing.”

Sara shook her head. “No. She accused me of being too sentimental. And it’s not like she was totally wrong either but, like I said, that wasn’t the main reason. Amaya...she didn’t think we could bring Rip back to himself enough for him to help us. I can’t blame her for thinking that either. She’d never met him before. The only Rip she knew was the one that was going around killing off members of her original team.”

Leonard nodded. “So, the next piece was in Camelot,” he said.

“It was. The member of the JSA there was Stargirl.” Sara smiled. “You’d know her as Merlin though.”

Leonard stared at her for a few minutes and then snorted. “I swear, everything I know,” he muttered. “So Merlin is a woman with superpowers instead of an old man. Disney definitely got that wrong.”

Sara laughed. “They really did. Stargirl is the one that created Camelot actually. She knew the Spear needed to be hidden so she used it to create Camelot, renamed herself Merlin, and hid the Spear in plain sight.”

He frowned as he thought about it. “Depends on which piece she had, I suppose. The round table?”

“Good guess but no. It was the sword in the stone.”

Leonard smirked. “Plain sight indeed.”

“Amaya decided to steal it since Stargirl wasn’t giving it to us.”

“My kind of plan,” Leonard said, nodding in approval.

“Yeah, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time since Rip and the others had used this future tech of Dr. Mid-Nite’s to take over Arthur’s mind, along with a bunch of the other knights in the kingdom.”

Leonard groaned. “Of course they had.”

“They made Arthur kill Galahad and Rip made sure we knew he could have Arthur slit his own throat with a simple thought before he gave Stargirl an ultimatum. The Spear or Camelot. And she had fallen in love with Arthur.”

“Well fuck.”

Sara nodded. “So when she caught me and Amaya leaving with the Spear, she told us to go. Take over her mission and protect the Spear.” Sara smiled slightly. “Her heart belonged to Camelot.”

“Yeah, falling for someone will make you do things like that,” he said, turning to look at her. She licked her lips and just as she looked like she was going to say something, he blew out a breath. “What happened next, Sara?”

She blew out a breath of her own. “We had the Spear but Ray refused to get back on the ship. He stayed behind.” She hesitated and then pushed forward. “And I was willing to leave him behind. Mick and I nearly came to blows over it until Amaya stepped in.”

That...that did not sound like the Sara he knew. The one that had been willing to try and run after Rip, the one that had only left him at the Oculus because staying would have meant more death.

“Why?” he asked. He didn’t bother to elaborate, he knew she’d understand.

She sighed. “A couple of reasons. I’d let what Amaya said before get to me. Started questioning if I was really looking at the big picture or if I was using it as an excuse to save Rip. I kept thinking about when I first became captain. Ray and Amaya had been taken, Rex was willing to leave them behind if it meant completing the mission because that’s what they trained to do and I had refused to do it. I was going to get them out and complete the mission. But when we were in Camelot, I started wondering if I should have been doing it more like the JSA.”

“And the other reason?” he prompted.

Sara closed her eyes. “The other reason...is much more selfish.” She swallowed. “I was scared. One of those men had killed my sister. Two of them had killed me. And the two that had killed me were people that I once cared about.” She opened her eyes to stare straight ahead. “I used to call Malcolm ‘Uncle Malcolm’ when I was a kid. I grew out of it obviously, started calling him just by his first name but still. The Queens, the Merlyns, and the Lances. It was one big tangle of relationships but we treated each other like family. And he killed me so he could get more power. Rip? Rip had become that big brother you love to annoy. He saved me by recruiting me to be on this mission. I met you...and Mick and Jax and everyone else because he recruited me and it gave me something to fight for. And he killed me like it was nothing.”

Rather than respond, Leonard tugged at her hand until she was leaning against his side and pressed a kiss to her temple. He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t like that Sara had been willing to leave Ray behind and he knew exactly why Mick had been willing to fight her on that but he couldn’t say he didn’t understand her reasons either. Sara was human, of course she was going to freak out sometimes and try to avoid the things that were causing her to feel that way.

“What did you decide to do?”

“Amaya stopped us by saying she didn’t want her words and decision to rip the Legends apart and told me to follow my gut. So I did.”

Leonard smiled slightly. He had a feeling he knew exactly what that meant. “Decided to stay?”

Sara sighed. “Yeah. As much as dying was on my mind...I had to stay. Despite what I’d said before, my gut had been screaming at me to stay and fight.” She slowly smiled. “And considering I knocked Rip flat on his ass and tossed him in the brig, it seemed like a pretty good decision.”

_That’s my girl_ , Leonard thought. Out loud, he asked, “Seemed like one?”

“Caught that, huh?”

“What went wrong?”

“Well, with Camelot, it all went fine. Mick saved the day by breaking the brainwashing on Arthur and his knights and he took out Mid-Nite’s tech. So, go team. It was after we left Camelot that it went to hell.” 

Even as Leonard felt a flash of pride that Mick was the one winning the fight for the team, he frowned. “What happened?”

“Rip used some override code to make Gideon listen to him even when what he was ordering her to do put all of us in danger. She was apologizing even as she was locking down parts of the ship so that Rip could do what he wanted. He forced Gideon to disable the ship which led to us crashing 70 million years in the past. Of course, he also ended up unconscious thanks to Mick knocking him out so that didn’t work out so well for him.”

“I...don’t think I have any words for that,” Leonard muttered. The things that happened to this team were ridiculous.

“It turned out we were in the Cretaceous period, which was where Rip had sent Ray when he scattered us through time so Ray took Nate and Amaya with him since the part we needed to fix the ship had landed somewhere in the damn jungle or whatever it was. I don’t know. Mick, Jax, Martin, and I all stayed behind to see if we could get the Rip we knew back.” She hesitated. “Mick was the one that figured it out.”

Leonard frowned. “Why do I get the feeling I won’t like it?”

“Because you won’t,” she told him. “It was something the Time Masters did to him and others.” She squeezed his hand, knowing that he’d blame himself for what she was about to say. “He suggested we enter Rip’s mind. Said that if they’d rewritten Rip, we should go in and change him back.”

His hand clenched around Sara’s as he took that in. Rewriting people’s minds. And Mick had learned it from the Time Masters. “How?” he asked.

“I honestly couldn’t explain exactly how it works. Martin and Jax figured it out with a bit of input from Mick but he said he...” She paused and then sighed. “He said he’d never gone into anyone else’s mind. He’d only experienced the other way around.”

Everything in Leonard went cold at the thought and he couldn’t help but tighten his grip on Sara’s hand until his knuckles turned white. She didn’t even flinch and he let out a breath. Christ, he’d left Mick to be tortured. He thought back to how Mick had said that people didn’t die at the Vanishing Point and wondered how many times Mick had ‘not died’ there. How many times had they violated his mind?

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, continuing to breathe like that until he no longer wanted to be sick. His lips lifted slightly when Sara pressed a kiss to his hand the way he’d done for her earlier.

“Did it work?” he asked quietly.

Sara nodded. “It did. Jax and I entered Rip’s mind while Mick and Martin stayed behind to monitor us. Of course, Rip’s mind was...well, it was the Waverider. But dark and full of villains we’d fought on this mission and that Rip had fought on his own. Also, evil versions of us.”

At that, Leonard opened his eyes and looked over at Sara. “What?”

“Yeah, I had to kick my own ass,” Sara said, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. “That was fun.”

Leonard smirked. “Well, I’m sure it was quite the sight. So evil versions of us, huh?”

Sara nodded and then frowned. “Well, almost. There was no evil you or Kendra. Or Carter. It was just the team that had been left after the Oculus. He didn’t know about Nate or Amaya so there was no evil version of them either.”

“Wait, no evil me? I might be insulted. Let me think on that.”

“I...actually have a theory on that. But it won’t make sense to you yet so I’ll tell you later,” she said. Off of his look, she smiled. “I promise.”

It was Thawne and the others who had locked Rip away in his mind and supplied his guards. They’d never known Kendra so they hadn’t used her image. Nate and Amaya were unknown to Rip so they probably hadn’t bothered with the two of them. And Leonard was someone they were thinking of recruiting so they couldn’t have Rip see him as an enemy. 

It reminded her a bit of how they hadn’t bothered to make an evil Gideon. It would never occur to them that Gideon was the one Rip was closest to on the ship. To them, Gideon was nothing but an A.I. But to Rip, Gideon was the one that had been by his side, through every up and down he’d ever had for at least a decade. 

Gideon was Rip’s home.

“Sara?”

She blinked and glanced at Leonard. “Sorry. Just thinking. Anyway, Jax and I beat ourselves up along with evil Mick and evil Ray though we got split up. And it turned out that they...regenerated which I definitely didn’t see coming and that led to damn evil Mick managing to knock me out. I woke up in a cell with, well, our Rip.”

“On the bright side,” Leonard said, trying to ignore the way his stomach clenched at the thought of Mick going after Sara again, “you found him.”

Sara snorted. “Ass.”

He smirked at her. “Always.”

She rolled her eyes, shaking her head and hiding a smile. “Anyway, after that I had the super fun job of trying to convince Rip that I wasn’t the other Sara and this wasn’t some new trick thought up to torture him. It worked eventually. Mostly because Jax found us and he brought some help with him.”

Leonard frowned. “I thought that all of Rip’s allies had been turned to enemies in his mind? Or most of them at least.”

“But they missed the most important one.” Sara smirked. “Gideon. She had a human form in his mind and Jax found her. They teamed up to get to me and Rip.” She glanced sideways at Leonard from under her lashes, smirk firmly in place. “For the record? Gideon is hot as a human.”

“Thank you, Ms. Lance,” Gideon said, sounding pleased.

Leonard smirked. “Did you kiss Gideon too?” he teased.

“You’re laughing but I definitely would have if she’d been interested.”

“I’m flattered, Ms. Lance,” Gideon told her.

“Also, for the record, Gideon, you’re a shameless flirt. I’m just saying.”

Gideon definitely sounded amused now. “Only with certain people, Ms. Lance.”

Sara grinned. “Well, see, now I’m honored to have made the list.”

“Sitting right here,” Leonard muttered, though he looked like he was fighting a smile.

“You’re my favorite man to flirt with,” Sara assured him, smirking.

“What a relief,” he drawled.

It felt like they’d taken a much needed break, Sara realized. At least to her it did. They were getting closer and closer to when she’d have to talk about Leonard’s past self and how she had treated Mick and, hell, even how that other Leonard had treated him. So she took a deep breath and continued.

She told him about how they’d gotten out just as the prison in Rip’s mind was collapsing. How Rip had been welcomed back by the others in their own unique ways (“Ray told him he almost ruined Star Wars in one of the most offended voices I’ve ever heard and Mick told him that he liked him better when he was killing people since it made Rip laugh.” “Yeah, he’s good at that.”) and how even though he’d destroyed the device they were using to track the Spear, he remembered where it (and Nate’s grandfather) were.

She told him about going to 1970 (“Please tell me you wore go-go boots.” “As a matter of fact...” “Why do I always miss seeing you in those, damn it?”) and how they’d tracked Heywood down at NASA. When she told him where his piece of the Spear had been hidden, he couldn’t help but grin. The JSA might be full of a bunch of heroes but he had to admit that he liked their style. Creating Camelot, hiding the Spear on the moon. Who knew what else they’d come up with if they had to?

He wondered though if this meant Camelot was the story that inspired Stargirl to make it real or if Stargirl creating it had inspired the story. Or was it one of those loops that would just make his head hurt by thinking about it?

He wasn’t going to ask.

Sara continued, telling him about how they’d realized that Thawne and the others were going to screw things up and that they’d have to intercept Apollo 13 to prevent that. How Ray had gotten stuck with Thawne and how they’d had to work together. She grinned when she told him about the distraction that Martin and Mick had come up with to keep everyone from realizing something was wrong (“Stein got Mick to sing what?” “Maybe we can set something up so they have to do it again and you can see.” “No maybes about that, we’re setting it up.”) and then the damage to the ship when she put it between the meteoroids and the command module. And she told him about how Henry Heywood had sacrificed himself to save his grandson and the rest of the team while Martin and Mick had directed them in landing.

“Damn,” Leonard breathed. 

Sara nodded. “Yeah. It turned out that Henry had arranged for his son to win a competition so that he could meet him. He gave that up so that Nate and the rest of us could live. So Nate took Henry’s spot and went to talk to his dad’s younger self.” She paused as she remembered what came next and let out a breath, closing her eyes.

Of course, Leonard noticed. “Sara?”

“We needed to steal the piece of the Spear that Thawne and the others had so we had to go to their...base? Whatever you want to call it,” she said. “They had set themselves up at the Vanishing Point.”

“Shit,” Leonard muttered.

“We had to split up to cover more ground and,” she let out a shaky breath, “Mick and I were the lucky ones that got to search the Oculus.”

Leonard froze, torn between anger that the team had let those two be the ones to enter that room and wanting to pull Sara closer because the only other time she’d sounded this shaky during her recount was when she’d talked about Laurel dying.

“Sara...” He trailed off, unsure of what he could say to make this better. 

He wasn’t sure he could.

“It was the first time we’d even mentioned you to each other,” she confessed. “Except I couldn’t even say your name. I couldn’t—“ She cut herself off and covered her eyes with her free hand. “I couldn’t,” she repeated. 

His free hand curled into a fist when he saw a few tears escape despite her best efforts.

“Sara, it’s okay,” he told her.

She shook her head. “It would make it real and that sounds so stupid because I already knew it was real but if I didn’t talk about you, I didn’t have to acknowledge it. I could just pretend you’d done what Kendra and Carter had and decided not to continue on the mission. But then we were there and it was so damn clean and I couldn’t understand how. It didn’t even look like there’d been an explosion in there. There was debris but that damn thing was still standing and there weren’t even any burn marks anywhere and we couldn’t see any bodies in there.”

Leonard heard the unspoken _We couldn’t see your body_ and was actually grateful for that. He wouldn’t have wanted them to see that.

Sara’s words were coming faster now as if, Leonard realized, this was the first chance she’d had to actually talk about it. 

Hell, this probably _was_ the first time she’d gotten to talk about it.

“And all I could think about was the year before, about this year, and how I’d _left you there_ and you died, Len, you died and I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t have a way to fix it or anyone to fight because you took the Time Masters with you and I couldn’t let Mick see how much it hurt to be back there because I had to get him out and—“

This time it was Leonard that cut her off as he yanked her closer to him, letting go of her hand to wrap both arms around her. He closed his eyes when her hands gripped the back of his jacket and she shook, finally allowing herself to do more than shed a few tears over his death. 

If his death had hurt Sara this badly when they’d only known each other for months, how badly had it messed with Mick? With _Lisa_? Hell, had Lisa even known? She’d been off the grid when he and Mick had left in January and she could stay like that for months at a time.

Softly, he began to talk to her, assuring her it wasn’t her fault, that he was sorry, that he was fine, and swearing that he wasn’t going anywhere. 

He very deliberately didn’t think of the times he’d done something similar for both Mick and Lisa.

“I’m sorry,” Sara eventually said, voice hoarse. Leonard opened his eyes as she pulled away to wipe at her eyes and he let out a breath.

“Nothing to apologize for,” he told her, knowing she’d catch the double meaning there. He waited while she took a deep breath and then drained half of her bottle of water in one go before pulling her back into his side.

Sara shook her head. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” she said. 

Leonard frowned. “Sara?”

“It’s...it’s coming up,” she said. That moment when Mick picked the past Leonard and the others over the team and asked Amaya to go with him would be out there soon and there’d be nothing that she could do to stall on explaining why he would do that.

It was better, she decided, to get it over with.

So, she told him about how they’d realized they needed J.R.R. Tolkien’s help in destroying the Spear when Mick had tried to do so by setting it on fire, which had revealed an inscription on it. She told him about how the Spear had whispered to each of them, tempting them to use it, once it was put together and how they’d gone to France during World War I, specifically the Battle of Somme, to find Tolkien. (“So many _Lord of the Rings_ jokes I could make right now that it hurts, Sara.”) She explained why they’d needed the blood of Christ and how they’d tracked down its location before she took a deep breath.

“Darhk and the others were there too though,” she said. 

“How the hell did they know what you were after? I can see them managing to track down what year you were in but how did they know where you were and what the plan was?”

“Well, that’s where you come in,” Sara told him. “Literally.”

Leonard stilled. “What?”

“They had gone back to 2013 and recruited your past self. Gave you the cold gun ahead of time and told you that we were the team that was going to get you killed.” She glanced at him. “It didn’t exactly make you feel warm and fuzzy towards us.” She sighed. “Mick had told you the plan.”

“Why the hell would Mick tell me the plan?” Leonard asked as he began to imagine how very wrong things might have gone with his past self there. “He knew I was dead.”

“Well, it turned out that Mick had been having hallucinations of you since Chicago. Martin found out and decided to help him out and that’s what the brain surgery was all about. Mick had sworn Martin to secrecy though and so Martin didn’t say a word to us. So when your past self approached Mick, he thought he was just seeing things again and once you’d caught on to that, you used it to find out what we were going to do.” She sighed. “Mick didn’t really believe you were real until you walked into the room and all of us could see you too.”

Leonard listened as she described the way they’d had to retreat back to the Waverider only for a fight to break out amongst the team.

“Hell, even Jax was agreeing with Nate on questioning Mick’s loyalty.” She sighed. “And instead of defending him, I ripped into him and Martin for not saying anything about the hallucinations.” She let go of his hand and scrubbed her hands over her face for a few moments. “So it should come as no surprise to you that when we fought against past you and the others, Mick chose them. Chose you. Because why wouldn’t he when we’d all been treating him like shit for the past year?”

Leonard shifted so he was facing Sara. “Sara?”

She blew out a breath. “I defended him against Amaya but after that? That was about it. Instead of the two of us becoming better friends because we bonded over losing someone we cared about, I just got angry. And if I wasn’t sometimes being horrible to Ray, it was Mick. Mostly Mick.” She shook her head. “I can’t even tell you why it was those two that I took it out on.” She let out a breath and turned to look Leonard in the eye. “But considering that Amaya was the only one that treated him decently once they stopped calling each other idiots, I can’t say I’m surprised that he chose an evil you over the team.”

Leonard slowly let out a breath. He had figured out early on in the conversation that things hadn’t gone well with Sara and Mick but he hadn’t expected her to flat out tell him that she’d treated him like shit most of the time for a year. 

Part of him was pissed off. Mick was his partner, his best friend, the closest thing he’d had to a brother. Part of him realized that being pissed off over Mick being mistreated made him a bit of a hypocrite because he hadn’t always stood by Mick. And part of him admired that Sara hadn’t tried to hide it or lie about it. No excuses, just the facts: she’d treated him like shit and hadn’t stopped the team from doing so either to the point that he’d turned on them and there wasn’t an excuse.

“I’m pissed off,” he admitted, noting the way that Sara closed her eyes and nodded like that was exactly the reaction she’d been expecting. “I’m pissed off and I’m not sure I have the right to be. Because Mick’s been my partner for more than thirty years and there are times that I’ve treated him like he’s an idiot, a well-trained dog to rein in.” He fought not to react when Sara winced at his wording. He’d ask about it later. “I’m not sure I get to be pissed that you took your anger out on him after only knowing him for a few months.” 

“He’s been your partner for more than thirty years,” Sara said, turning his words back on him. “Your best friend. And even if you haven’t always treated him right, it doesn’t mean you don’t get to be mad at me for how I treated him, for not sticking by him when the team didn’t.” Her lips tilted into a wry smile. “We’re not always logical about the people we care about, Leonard. You can be pissed off on Mick’s behalf.” Her fingers curled before she caught herself and deliberately straightened them. “The fact that I was grieving doesn’t give me a free pass. I could have sucked it up. Hell, I should have. I was the captain. I should have been paying more attention and making sure we acted like the family we called ourselves.”

Leonard stared at her. “You make it pretty hard to be pissed off at you when you beat yourself up so much, you know.” He studied her for a few more moments before he very pointedly slid his hand into hers again. “I knew I wasn’t going to like what you had to say. I could see the shame every now and then. But I’d be a hypocrite if I condemned you for it.” Especially with how Sara seemed to already blame herself for what had happened.

He wasn’t sure that was entirely fair to her either. Part of him (Christ, he was splitting his thoughts on this too much) wanted to argue that Mick was a grown man and if he didn’t like the way he was being treated, he should have confronted the others about it. But that wasn’t something Mick would do for a number of reasons, Leonard knew so it wouldn’t have been an option. Mick wasn’t an idiot, no matter how others (and yes, sometimes that included Leonard too) treated him. He’d have known that Sara was just lashing out. He could have stopped it probably. The fact that he’d confronted her over leaving Ray behind in Camelot proved that. 

The fact was that between Mick’s dad, Leonard (though Leonard thought—hoped—he’d gotten better about it over the years), and others that they’d worked with, Mick was used to being treated like shit. Most of the time, he wouldn’t take it lying down but when he cared about a person...

Well, that was something else entirely.

He hadn’t cared about Rip and the team at first. That’s why he hadn’t had a problem turning on them when he’d brought the time pirates on board. Mick had only been thinking of Leonard and himself and keeping the two of them safe. But if he’d let the team treat him like shit and then walked, he’d come to care about them. It reminded him of how Mick had held on to their partnership until Leonard had left him in the woods and then Mick had come after him as Chronos when he’d gotten the chance. 

And their friendship had recovered from that, from Mick going through years of torture at the Time Masters’ hands, so he knew that Mick and Sara and the rest of the team would have gotten through what had happened between them as well.

Mick, for all that he acted like a hotheaded idiot that didn’t care about anything, had a soft side that made him quick to forgive the people he cared about.

“He would have forgiven you,” he told her, keeping it simple.

“I know,” she said. “He did.” She thought of how he’d gone against Leonard for them and how he’d died at Leonard’s hands and let out a breath. “I know he did,” she repeated softly.

Leonard’s gaze sharpened. “I’m not going to like what happens next, am I?”

“You’re really not.” She blew out a breath and squeezed his hand, grateful that she could. “To cut to the chase? Both the team and...Thawne and the others—“

“You could just call them the Legion,” he teased. She gave him a dirty look.

“No,” was all she said. “Anyway, both teams were after the Spear and, in the end, both teams were there and Mick was the one holding the Spear. He handed it to you and asked Amaya to join you guys.” She nodded at the surprised look he gave. “Like I said, Amaya was the only one that treated him well all the time rather than going back and forth. They got close. But she chose to stay with us and Thawne whisked you guys and the Spear off so that you could rewrite reality.”

“My past self was onboard with rewriting reality,” Leonard said slowly. “Well, your surprise from earlier makes sense now.”

“Just one of the differences between you and the past you,” Sara acknowledged. “Even Mick seemed surprised at how different you were.”

Leonard frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Once you guys rewrote reality, we were still around. We were just...well, we took on the roles you guys gave us. Ray was a janitor. Nate was this conspiracy theory blogger. Jax was an asshole that worked for Thawne and Martin was one of his flunkies that he treated like the dirt on the bottom of his shoe. You and Mick were the leading thieves of Central City. If cops showed up at a bank you were robbing, they’d actually apologize and call you Mr. Snart and you’d graciously forgive them.”

That was...horrible sounding. No challenge at all. “That sounds like a world I’d hate.” He glanced at her. “Where were you in this new world?”

“Amaya and I were Darhk’s favored assassins. We killed heroes and vigilantes on his orders then handed over their masks or weapon to him for his collection that he displayed in his office. The last vigilante I remember killing was Felicity Smoak.”

“Hell,” he muttered. He remembered hearing about Felicity, someone who hadn’t judged Sara for joining the league and had literally taken a bullet for Sara. “Sara—“

“Don’t.” She shook her head. “It’s not like we were friends. Not that version of you.”

“Anything else different?”

“You once told me that you tried to avoid killing people on a job because it drew too much attention. Too much heat.” She glanced at him. “Past you didn’t seem to share that philosophy. Of course, it could be because you’d been told we got you killed but, well, not even Mick expected that level of ruthlessness from you.”

He almost didn’t want to ask. But he wasn’t going to back off now. “What happened?”

“Mick didn’t like the new world. Didn’t like seeing all of us in the roles we’d been given. But he didn’t decide to really do something about that until Nate.” She took a sip of water and licked her lips. “Nate had figured out that something was wrong. That someone had changed reality. But it didn’t occur to him that the people in power might be the ones that did it so he went to Thawne with his revelation and started talking about tracking the person that did it down. Thawne ordered you and Mick to kill Nate and off you went to do as you were told.”

“Wait, so I was basically the head of crime in Central City but I also acted as Thawne’s lackey?” What the hell was wrong with his past self?

“I’m assuming he held the fact that they’d stopped your death over your head to get you to do things.”

“So I was a blackmailed lackey. Joy. That’s so much better.”

Sara’s lips twitched. “Anyway, Mick couldn’t do it. Instead, he knocked you out and took off with Nate. And because you didn’t trust him, you had put trackers in his boots.”

Leonard raised an eyebrow. “You know this how?”

“Darhk briefed me and Amaya before he sent us after Mick,” Sara told him. 

Leonard swore. He’d seen how Sara fought and Sara had explained that even without her totem, Amaya was an expert in various forms of fighting. “Damn it.”

“By the time we got to him, he and Nate were with Ray. Mick had managed to use something of Ray’s to get their memories back. During the fight, they surprised me and suddenly I’m being blinded by a flash and then my memories come back. They didn’t get to Amaya though. We had just decided to leave and regroup to try a new strategy when they managed to hit me with the device so she didn’t see my memories come back.” She shook her head. “I went back to try and pretend that nothing had changed but I was still off from getting my memories back and so I wasn’t able to keep up the act as well as I could have if it were a few years ago.” She thought back to her days with the league and the way she’d always been able to blend seamlessly, fooling people easily into believing her lies and shook her head again. “I really should have taken more time to regroup and come up with a better story but I didn’t and Darhk realized it. He could tell I was different and he got me to break cover by making me look at his collection of masks and saying his favorite kill was one he’d done himself. The Black Canary. You can imagine how well I took that.”

“You blew your cover completely with that remark, I’m guessing,” Leonard said. He could see what Sara meant about going back too soon but he had a feeling that staying away would have been just as bad. Still, it meant she’d gotten rusty on that front and that probably wasn’t sitting well with her.

Then again, she might not be rusty when it came to keeping a cover. There was also the theory that she had just been too emotionally invested this time. It was something they’d have to figure out though considering that they’d have to be keeping up a cover of not knowing the others.

“I did. And Darhk lifted me in the air with his magic and started to strangle me” She paused and she couldn’t help but grin a bit. “While you stood there annoyed that he was monologuing at a time like that. But I managed to get Amaya’s memories back and we got the hell out of there so we could get back to the others.”

“Why do I get the feeling this still won’t end well?”

“Because it didn’t. We got Jax back but Martin refused to leave when Jax asked so that we could use the device on him. It was his moment of rebellion against the guy that he hated apparently. So we had to go after the Spear without him.” She swallowed. “You, Darhk, and Merlyn were plotting behind Thawne’s back to kill him and were after the Spear as well since he’d hidden it and was planning to destroy it so no one could alter reality again.” 

“So a showdown between the two teams. Lovely,” Leonard drawled. He paused when he saw the look on Sara’s face. “It went badly, didn’t it?”

She closed her eyes for a few moments. “The Spear kept getting passed between the two teams until suddenly it landed in front of Mick,” she said. “It was like everything had come full circle. You stepped up and told Mick to do as he was told and give you the Spear.”

Leonard winced. “Past me sounds like an asshole.”

“You were...much more vicious than expected.” She let out a breath as she thought of what came next.

“I have a feeling that’s going to come into play,” he said. “What did I do, Sara?”

She squeezed his hand. “Amaya was behind Mick. She asked him to give her the Spear instead. Said she believed in him and trusted him. Told him that she had never stopped.”

Leonard had a feeling he knew where this was going and the thought that he’d done that to Mick wasn’t something he wanted to consider. “Sara,” he said.

“He threw the Spear back to her and you made a remark about how it turned out you really could teach old dogs new tricks and Mick told Amaya to say the words and change things. We were all so focused on her as she started to speak that no one noticed you move.” She took a deep breath and looked at him. “Do you remember when you were using the cold gun to try and plug the hole in the ship? How you had to hold down the trigger and move it side to side to cover the area?”

Leonard swallowed. “Yeah,” was all he said as he thought of where Sara was going with that train of thought.

“You...you didn’t need to do that this time. You just shot Amaya once and within seconds, she was completely encased in a block of ice.”

“Christ,” he muttered, closing his eyes.

“I don’t know if that’s something Thawne did to give you more incentive to join them or if it’s something that happened when reality was altered but I’d never seen the cold gun do that.” She shook her head. “We were all so surprised that no one moved quickly enough to stop what happened next.” She met his gaze, knowing that he’d rather have her do that than avoid looking at him. “You shattered her and then you turned to Mick and said, ‘Sorry, Mick, I know you loved her to pieces.’ Then you picked up the Spear like nothing had happened.”

Leonard gripped Sara’s hand harder at the thought of what Mick’s face must have looked like. Hell, even now he could hear the grief in Sara’s voice so Mick wasn’t the only one he’d hurt with that stunt. 

He wasn’t sure what to say. Did he apologize for something he didn’t remember doing? For something that hadn’t even happened yet? Or did he just acknowledge it and move on?

“I told you I was going to kill you and the others right after that if it makes you feel better,” Sara told him, pulling him out of his thoughts. When he glanced at her, she lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I was so angry in that moment that it didn’t occur to me that killing that version of you would mean never meeting the you from 2016.”

“I’m not sure angering an assassin that much should make me feel better and yet,” Leonard said after a few moments.

“Happy to help,” Sara replied. She relaxed a bit when he smirked at her. “After that, Thawne showed up and after all that, he managed to get the Spear anyway and he destroyed it in front of us. And no one stopped us from leaving, I’m assuming because it was a case of deciding why bother since we couldn’t change anything now and we had just lost a teammate so we’d probably be useless.”

“I’m guessing that was the wrong move,” Leonard said, a bit of satisfaction in his tone.

“Well, it didn’t seem that way at first. We were still in shock, I think. I can’t remember who said it but they pointed out that we were screwed because we couldn’t fix anything without the Spear and that’s when I had an idea that I knew would piss Rip off once we found him.”

“Those are usually the best ones,” he said, smirking.

“Well, first we had to find him. Which we did but, well, then we had a problem.”

“Of course you did,” he sighed. “Rip had no memories again? How many times did they mess with his mind?”

“No, that would have been easier probably but this led to us getting Ray’s suit back as well so I guess I can’t argue the results.” She glanced over at him. “They had shrunk the Waverider down so that it was the size of a model airplane. And they shrunk it while Rip was inside so he was living the real life version of _Honey, I Shrunk the Kids_.”

Leonard snorted. “You have to admit, that’s kind of funny.”

“Maybe,” Sara admitted, smiling slightly. “Anyway, we got Ray’s suit back and he was able to get the Waverider back to regular size. Of course, he did it from inside the building so we made a hell of an exit.”

Leonard grinned. “Well, if there’s one thing this team does well, it’s dramatics.”

“You’re not wrong,” she agreed.

“So, your plan that Rip was going to hate?”

Rather than answer, she asked, “What’s the big rule of time travel? The one that Rip actually follows?”

There was no hesitation as he answered, “Don’t interfere in events you were a part of.” As soon as he said it, his eyes snapped up to meet Sara’s. “You wanted to go get the Spear before they could in 1916.”

Sara nodded. “And even though Rip was against the idea at first, he didn’t have a better idea on how we could reverse everything that had happened. So we went back and...” She shook her head remembering Ray’s death. “It was a disaster,” she said, voice choked.

“Sara?”

“We decided to go get Christ’s blood so that we could destroy the Spear. Ray...Ray was the one that went because it was the middle of the damn battlefield and he could shrink and fly over there unnoticed. What we didn’t know was that Thawne had run back in time to warn the past versions of you guys about us. We found out when he showed up in front of Ray and he...” She swallowed, closing her eyes as she remembered the look of shock on Ray’s face when Thawne’s hand pierced his chest and the way Rip had had to hold her back. “He ripped Ray’s heart out. Literally.” Her free hand curled into a fist as she opened her eyes and looked over at Leonard. “He ripped Ray’s heart out and I couldn’t do anything. I was going to try but Rip held me back.” 

Leonard let out a shaky breath. He may have fun giving Ray hell but Ray was still part of his crew, his team. And it pissed him off that this bastard that had killed Barry’s mom had also killed Ray. It pissed him off that there was a version of him that worked with the man.

He squeezed Sara’s hand, unable to say out loud that he was glad that Rip had stopped her. But he also understood her frustration. “I know I’m not one for optimism usually but please tell me you guys won after that.”

Sara laughed, the sound more broken than amused. “No. No, we really didn’t.”

Leonard tugged her closer. “What happened?”

“We decided to try and get the Spear so that, at the very least, we could stop Mick from handing it over and we’d have that advantage over Thawne since he’d destroyed Christ’s blood.” She sighed. “Long story short, we got caught by our past selves. You can imagine how well that went.”

Leonard’s lips twitched. “I’m sure.”

“Past me wanted to know who had the dumb idea to break this particular rule of time travel. Should have seen her face when I said it was hers. Mick wanted to punch his own teeth out and the two Rips were going on about rules and commiserating over how they couldn’t believe that he had agreed to go along with this plan. Ray and Amaya found out they were dead. Martin assumed he was dead.” She sighed again. “Eventually, the arguing stopped and we decided to get the hell out of there to regroup. Except interacting with our past selves caused a time storm that prevented us from leaving. Which is naturally also when Thawne and pals decided to ambush us.”

“Naturally,” he deadpanned.

“After that...” She let out a breath. “We ran, covering the past version of the team to give them time to use the Spear. And we paid for it.”

“Sara?” Leonard shifted closer, a frown on his face.

“Merlyn shot an arrow at the past version of Martin. Jax took the hit and was killed. Darhk killed Nate.”

His frown deepened as he thought of the teammate she hadn’t mentioned yet. “Mick?”

“Also killed,” she said. 

Leonard took in the way she refused to look at him and knew. But he needed to hear it. “Who?”

“Len—“

“Who, Sara?”

She sighed and looked over at him. “You. The past you shot him in the back.”

Leonard closed his eyes, furious at this other version of himself. He knew he could be ruthless. If someone wanted out of his crew, he tended to kill them to protect everyone else that stayed. But to kill Mick? He hadn’t thought he had that in him.

And yet, he’d done it.

“Fuck,” he muttered, leaning down to touch his forehead to hers. 

She squeezed his hand once before letting go and wrapping her arm around his waist instead. “Yeah,” she agreed as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. After a few moments, she continued, “Rip and I were the only ones alive by the time it came to a standstill. The other me had the Spear and the past team along with Rip and I were facing off against Merlyn, Darhk, and you. Then Thawne showed up and he...I don’t know. He ran and created multiple versions of himself. I don’t know how.”

“They’re called time remnants, Ms. Lance,” Gideon said, speaking up for the first time in a while. “Barry Allen is capable of doing this as well. It’s something he will use against Zoom in the future.”

“Well, good to know one of the good guys can do it too, I guess.” She shook her head. “Rip...I remember he said something about how it had to be me that used it. He went up against Thawne and the time remnants killed him. But he bought enough time for the other me to use it. I don’t know what she saw but she’d used it to do two things. One, to make the Spear useless to anyone else ever again. And two, to make it impossible for Thawne to run. You see, Thawne was constantly running off and we had realized it was because he was running from something called the Black Flash.”

“Never heard of him,” Leonard said.

Sara smiled. “You wouldn’t. I don’t think he usually shows himself but he’d been chasing Thawne. And honestly, I’m not sure if there was much humanity left in Black Flash. Enough to police speedsters obviously but Black Flash was more...feral. Part of his face was missing, he was in all black, and he didn’t speak. He snarled and growled.”

“That sounds,” Leonard paused before deciding on, “a bit horrifying. Though if he polices speedsters, I suppose I can see why he’d target Thawne.”

“Well, it was more that Thawne wasn’t supposed to exist,” Sara said.

Leonard frowned. “What?”

“Thawne was the descendant of Eddie Thawne, Iris’ former fiancé. When it came out that the Reverse Flash was Eobard Thawne from the future and that Eddie was his ancestor, Eddie shot himself to prevent Eobard from ever being born. After Eddie died, Thawne couldn’t stay in one place long before the Black Flash would show up. He was running through history constantly after that, trying to stay one step ahead of Black Flash. The other me used the Spear to make sure that he couldn’t. Black Flash erased him from existence. And that’s when I started to fade away.” Her lips twitched. “I quoted _The Sandlot_ to myself and as I faded away, I looked at the past you and I thought of the Oculus and how I’d left you there. I thought of how the team had died and of the people we’d all lost and I wished that we’d found another way for it to end. The next thing I knew, I was back here, talking about how we could change our own fate.”

Leonard’s gaze sharpened as he looked at her. “You wished for that? Exactly that?”

“Yes.” Sara stared at him for a moment. “Why is that significant to you?”

“Because it’s what I wished for,” he said. “At the Oculus. I was watching you drag Mick away and even though I was relieved you guys and Lisa would be safe, I also thought of the future that I’d been imagining with you and I was pissed that I wasn’t going to get a chance at that. I wished we’d found another way for it to end. Then I looked at Druce and told him there were no strings on me and the Oculus blew seconds after that. And then I was here, listening to you convince Ray that the future wasn’t set in stone.”

Sara stared at him for a few moments, her arm tightening around his waist. “Something interfered. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the time stream or what but something interfered and...granted our wish.”

“That seems a bit too good to be true,” Leonard muttered. He sighed. “But I don’t have another explanation.”

“I think it was a combination of things. Mick said that people don’t die at the Vanishing Point. The Oculus is what the Time Masters used to control people’s choices. Their destinies. And then add in the fact that the team interfered in events they participated in and that time storms were interfering with time enough that we couldn’t leave. We basically broke time by doing that. Combine that with the fact that both of us wanted the same thing and that you were literally arm deep in something that allows people to alter things...”

“It all came together in a way that brought us back. I wished that we had found another way for it to end. I didn’t just wish that I could find a solution. I thought of more than one person. I mean, I’d have been expecting the team but still.”

“And I thought the same way. Not just me. When I thought it, I wished we had found another way. But I was the only member of the team that had survived.”

“Well, that’s a good enough explanation for me,” Leonard decided. “Gideon, does that seem plausible to you?”

“I admit, Mr. Snart, that I would have said no before this. But listening to Ms. Lance’s story and knowing the details of what the two of you were thinking and taking in to consideration the conditions...yes. I believe it’s entirely plausible.”

“Like I said,” Leonard told Sara, “that’s good enough for me.”

Sara laughed, feeling lighter than she had in a long time. She knew that they’d both need time to process everything but she couldn’t bring herself to do it right now.

Instead, she turned towards Leonard, a slow smile appearing on her face. “You know, if we don’t leave this room looking like we at least kissed, we’ll blow our cover right from the start.”

Leonard smirked, amused. “Is that so?”

Sara hummed in agreement and nodded. “It is.”

He tugged her so that she was straddling him. “Well, we can’t have that.”

“We really can’t,” she agreed. She shook her head even as she lowered her mouth to his, cutting off his laughter.

~*~*~

“We’ll have to talk again, you know,” Leonard said, pulling back from Sara. They’d migrated from Leonard leaning against the wall to lying side by side, facing each other. “About us. Everything.”

Sara sighed. “I know.” She was sick of talking. But she knew they’d have to. Kissing for who knows how long might seem like a good solution to everything but she and Leonard would have to figure out what they wanted from each other. Or, at the very least, say it out loud to each other rather than just letting their actions say it.

“But first, we need to make some decisions. We need to decide if we want to tell Rip and Kendra about this.” Leonard watched as Sara bit her lip and then blew out a breath. “You’ve already got thoughts on that.”

“I think we should keep it a secret for now. At least from Rip. Kendra, we could probably get away with telling her. But if we tell Rip, he’s going to start looking to us to see if he’s on the right track. The team will notice. So unless we’re willing to tell the whole team...”

“We keep it to ourselves,” Leonard finished. “Because if we tell the team what happened, they’ll want to know details about the future we came from.”

“It could easily color how they see each other.” Sara shook her head. “We don’t tell them. If we can avoid it, we don’t tell Kendra either. But, I think that’ll have to wait until we see whether or not Carter ends up killed.”

“And even then, we don’t need to tell her. We can come up with a more detailed plan later on how to stop Savage from using Carter against her,” Leonard said. “So, we keep quiet. Except with Gideon.”

“Except with Gideon,” Sara agreed.

“I’m flattered,” Gideon told them. 

Sara laughed. “Damn right, Gideon.”

“I should also tell you that Vandal Savage is not going to be home tonight. It would seem that he’s been invited to a party by one of the buyers that was at the auction. Now would be the time to have Ms. Saunders and Mr. Hall tell Captain Hunter about the dagger.”

Sara and Leonard glanced at each other and nodded. Sara sighed as they sat up. “Well, Ray probably won’t go inside with you to steal the dagger. Unless Rip is crazy,” she said.

Leonard let out a sigh of his own. “Well, that means that he’ll try to have Ray go in with us.”

She laughed. “I’ve got an idea for that actually. I’ll use the fact that Ray nearly left his tech behind and that I picked it up if I have to but if Rip wants someone going with you and Mick for this, I’m going to make sure it’s me that goes.”

Leonard allowed himself a quick smile. “I do love when a plan starts to come together.”

“I’ve alerted Ms. Saunders and Mr. Hall to tell Captain Hunter about the dagger now,” Gideon told them.

Sara grinned. “One step at a time for this one.”

He blew out a breath. “One step at a time,” he agreed.

~*~*~

“So,” Leonard drawled as he and Sara joined the rest of the team, “Gideon tells me there’s a dagger you need stolen.” He smirked. “I volunteer as tribute.”

Jax grinned and let out a surprised laugh. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a fan.” 

“The books were better,” Leonard told him seriously.

Martin, Sara noted, was watching them with a small smile that she had learned meant he was thinking of Clarissa. He was probably remembering the time after they’d first gotten together. Mick, on the other hand, was smirking at them. He waggled his eyebrows at her and she rolled her eyes even as she smirked right back.

Rip turned and paused at the sight of them. While they’d both made a token effort at straightening out their clothes, it was still clear that they’d, at the very least, been making out like a couple of teenagers. When Leonard raised an eyebrow and Sara grinned, he cleared his throat. “Right,” he said. “Well, it would seem that Kendra and Carter found something that might be useful.”

Kendra gestured to the article in Rip’s hand. “The dagger that Savage used to kill us. That article talks about who bought it recently and anything associated with the night we died can be used to kill Savage. We learned that the last time we went up against him.”

Leonard moved forward and snatched the article from Rip in the same way he had before. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Despite the fact that Ray seemed to have softened a bit towards Leonard, he still stepped forward. “I’ll go with you.”

“Sorry,” Leonard said, the words he’d spoken before coming back to him easily. “I’ve already got a partner.”

“Who we trust even less than you,” Ray said, frowning.

“Look, you’re more than welcome to go with them,” Rip told Ray. “Just don’t take along any of your future tech.”

This, Sara realized, was one of the moments where that lack of trust in both the Rogues was reinforced. Rip supporting Ray in going just made everyone feel justified in not trusting them.

Time to change that.

“Okay, no, that’s a stupid idea,” she said, crossing her arms. “If anyone is going to back Leonard and Mick up, it’s me.”

Ray frowned. “You?” He flicked his eyes between her and Leonard. “Wouldn’t that be distracting?”

Sara sighed. “Ray, I was known as The Beloved amongst the League of Assassins. Because that’s what I was to Nyssa, the daughter of R’as al Ghul, Heir to the Demon.” She smirked. “I rose very quickly in the ranks, not because of that but because I’m good at what I do. Trust me, a little B&E with Leonard and Mick won’t distract me from getting the job done.”

“I don’t doubt your skills but I still think I should go. I want to go.”

“Then let me ask you something. Have you ever stolen anything, Ray?”

He frowned. “What? No.”

Sara nodded and uncrossed her arms. “Okay. And have you ever broken in to a home before?”

“I’ve broken in to plenty of places while helping the Green Arrow,” he said.

“Then let me rephrase that. Have you ever managed to do that and not get caught or have to fight your way out?” She smiled slightly when he looked away instead of answering. “Look, you want to help and that’s great. But this particular mission needs to be in and out. You’d inevitably trip an alarm or you’d argue about how they want to do things because you look at them and see criminals. You might hold a bit more regard for me because of my sister but I’m still an assassin. One that’s never been caught, I might add.”

“Nice, Blondie,” Mick said, grinning. She grinned back. It was something that Mick had mentioned in one of their friendlier moments after the Oculus. He’d liked having a captain that had never been caught.

“Thanks, big guy.” She turned back to Ray. “The point is, like I said, this job needs to be a quick in and out. Leonard and Mick are going to need someone that’s not questioning every move they want to make. Someone that trusts them.”

“And that’s you,” Ray said quietly.

“And that’s me,” she agreed. “No one is saying you can’t learn how to do this in the future, Ray. But do you really think that the mission where we’re trying to steal something that can help us defeat Savage is the place to do it?” 

Ray sighed and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I guess not.”

“Finally,” Mick said. “Now can we get going on the job?”

“Captain Hunter, I’ve found out that the name of the owner of the house is an alias,” Gideon announced. Leonard and Sara exchanged a quick look. That hadn’t happened the last time.

Rip frowned. “Exactly how important is that to us, Gideon?”

“Considering that it’s Vandal Savage’s, Captain, very.”

Rip swore. “Fantastic. Of course he’s the one with the very dagger we need to kill him.”

Sara frowned. They hadn’t had warning that the house was owned by Savage last time so how had Gideon known? Her eyes widened slightly as she remembered that she and Leonard had spoken about it earlier. Smirking slightly, she glanced back at Leonard again and saw he’d come to the same conclusion.

Gideon was covering for them in case they slipped up. It would also make it much easier to convince the others not to come along.

“Okay,” Leonard said, “so that’s unexpected. It doesn’t change anything. We still need that dagger so we’ll still be breaking in.”

“And what if Savage should return home ahead of time?” Rip asked, shooting a look at them.

Leonard smirked. “That would be why the Waverider or that jump ship of yours will be waiting nearby. In case we need back up.” He glanced at Sara and then over at Kendra and Carter. “But I don’t think you two should be part of that back up.” He held up a hand when it looked like they were both going to protest. “Look, it’s nothing against you but Gideon caught Sara and I up on what you guys were talking about before we got here.” Thankfully. It’d been a necessary reminder of what he was going to say next and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought about it the first time around. He looked at Kendra. “You said that the dagger needs to be used while you say some sort of incantation, right?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, glancing at Carter before turning back to him. “Why?”

“You also said you couldn’t speak or read the language so your boy here is going to teach it to you. Great, fantastic, fine. You still can’t be there. Because I don’t know if anyone else noticed but while we were fighting at the auction, Savage knew you were there without seeing you. He said it out loud.” Off of everyone’s surprised look, Leonard couldn’t help but be glad he’d remembered that. “Now imagine you’re there while we’re stealing the dagger and Savage shows up before he’s supposed to. He can sense you’re there and he’ll want to fight you. Maybe you get to us in time for us to pass you the dagger but it won’t matter because the damn thing is just a pretty knife without the incantation. You’ll also be worrying about protecting each other.” He glanced at Carter. “You especially. Because while Kendra can hold her own, she’s still getting her memories back. She’s still trying to get all her skills back. You’ll be worried about her and you’ll try to protect her. Nothing wrong with that except Savage can use it to get the drop on you and, let’s face it, he’s more likely to kill you than Kendra.”

Kendra was pale as she looked over at Carter. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. He’s right. You’d step between me and Savage in a heartbeat and Savage knows that. He’d use it.”

Carter stayed silent for a few moments, a frown on his face, before he sighed. “You’re right,” he said to Leonard. “I hate that but you’re right.” His lips twitched. “I’d rather be in the fight but I won’t risk Kendra.” 

Leonard was just glad that no one seemed to think about asking why Carter couldn’t say the incantation.

“Very well,” Rip sighed. “I suppose that you’ve got a plan.”

He shrugged. “Gideon, do you have any information about Savage’s house? Floorplan, the type of alarm system he installed, things like that?”

“I’ll see what I can find, Mr. Snart. Of course, anything I find will only show what Vandal Savage has allowed to be put on record.”

“Better than nothing,” Mick said, nodding at Leonard. “Boss?”

“Right,” Leonard said. “Let’s start planning for the alarm system that Savage won’t have on the record because that’s the one he’ll be expecting anyone breaking in to trip.”

“You guys really plan for everything, don’t you?” Jax asked, sounding a bit surprised.

“Always have a backup plan, kid,” Leonard told him. “And make sure that your backup plan has a backup.” He paused. “But also be prepared to throw your plan out the window when things go to hell.”

Martin, Sara noted, looked fairly bemused by the entire conversation though he didn’t say anything. She had a feeling he was trying to assimilate this Leonard with his assumption of who Leonard was. The same could probably be said for her—she had no illusions that while she hadn’t been as looked down on as Leonard and Mick, there’d been a fear of her from some of her teammates at times. As for Mick, she figured that Martin was also realizing that if there was more to her and Leonard than he’d originally assumed, there was more to Mick.

She hoped so, at least. She hadn’t been good to Mick this last year. Maybe she could make up for that now.

Even if he’d never know there was anything for her to make up for.

~*~*~

“Gideon,” Sara said. “Can you keep an eye on Savage and let us know if he leaves early?” She glanced at Leonard and Mick. “It gives us a little bit of a heads up.”

Mick grinned. “I like the way you think, Blondie.”

“Of course, Ms. Lance,” Gideon agreed as they each checked to be sure they had what they needed. “And might I add that you might want to watch out for the three armed guards Savage has patrolling the grounds.”

Sara grinned at Leonard and Mick. “You guys mind letting me have the guards?”

Leonard raised an eyebrow at Mick in question, smirking when Mick shook his head. “Have fun, Assassin.” They watched as she winked at them and then left, moving quickly down the ramp and heading towards the right.

“Just remember to get out as quickly as you can with that dagger,” Rip said.

Mick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, moving down the ramp and stopping at the bottom. 

“Relax, Rip, we got this,” Leonard told him. He paused at the top of the ramp and glanced back. “This is why you recruited us, after all.” Rather than wait for an answer, he sauntered down the ramp, smirking when Mick snorted in amusement at him.

They were silent as they headed towards Savage’s house. Leonard had a feeling that Mick was dying to find out more about him and Sara but, so far, he was keeping quiet about it despite the fact that the others wouldn’t hear anything over the comm. He figured that Mick would come talk to him later about it which would be when he’d use the story he and Sara had come up with. And if Mick wanted to know why Leonard hadn’t mentioned knowing Sara before...

Leonard frowned. Well, he’d deal with that if it came up.

Savage lived far from any neighbors which had made it incredibly easy to find a place to park the Waverider. It also meant it’d be easy to get out of there. Hopefully.

Leonard nodded at the hedges and trees lining part of the front lawn and walkway. Mick didn’t say a word as he automatically changed course and headed there. It was the same spot they’d hidden with Ray the first time around though there wouldn’t be a need for that with Sara taking out the guards.

“Dummy box,” Leonard said quietly, nodding at the very thing that had alerted the guards to their presence before. Mick smirked.

“Rookie mistake,” he muttered.

There was a click signaling that someone was activating their comm before Sara said, “Guards are napping.”

Mick laughed and tapped his own comm. “That was quick, Blondie. We’re at the front. Feel like playing lookout?”

“On my way.”

Mick glanced at Leonard. “Your girl’s alright, Boss.”

Leonard thought about ignoring the comment or even denying that Sara was his girl but considering everything that had already happened, he didn’t think he could. Hell, he didn’t think he wanted to. So instead he smirked and nodded.

“Yeah, she is,” he agreed. 

Less than a minute later, Sara slid out of the shadows, causing both of them to blink at her sudden appearance. Leonard still had no idea how she managed to do that while wearing white leather but it was damn handy.

“Neat trick,” Mick said as if he’d read Leonard’s mind.

Sara shot him a quick grin. “Top of my class in stealth,” she said.

Leonard narrowed his eyes. “Are you being literal?” he asked.

She laughed and turned to scan the area, making sure there wasn’t anyone watching and that none of their team had decided to tail them. “Maybe.”

Shaking his head, he turned back to the house. “Okay, Mick, let’s get in here so we can get that dagger.” His lips twitched in amusement as he pictured the others’ reactions. “And anything else that catches our eye.”

Despite having done this once before, Leonard took his time getting in to be sure they didn’t miss anything. This was still Mick’s first time breaking in to this house technically so he couldn’t go too quickly or his partner would definitely suspect something was going on. 

He smiled slightly as they entered the room that held the dagger along with plenty of other items worth plenty, he was sure.

Leonard exchanged a look with Mick and smirked as they looked over the room. There was the dagger. And there were all the other objects that Savage had collected, things that they’d need to take—not just for fun but also so that Savage wouldn’t know right away who had taken it.

Not that Leonard was under the impression that Savage wouldn’t figure it out but it would take longer, hopefully, if more than just the dagger was missing.

Something that Ray hadn’t understood last time. (Though to be fair, Leonard and Mick had definitely been hoping for a good score the first time this had gone down.)

“Nice,” Mick said, nodding. He grinned as he and Leonard moved in sync, each of them breaking a glass case. The sound of a third case shattering had him laughing as he looked up to see Sara pulling her elbow back up. “I’m going to go find the safe while you guys get this stuff together.”

Leonard nodded as Mick left the room and then shook his head at Sara when she reached for the dagger. “That’ll bring a cage down on us,” he said. “I’ve got to reroute the security system first.” He definitely wasn’t going to be caught in that damn cage again while Mick was ambushed by Savage. Sara might have taken away the element of surprise for Savage by having Gideon keep an eye on the bastard but Leonard wasn’t going to take any chances.

He moved quickly to the stand that he’d found before and went through the motions he’d gone through before flipping the switch that Ray had the last time. “We’re good,” he said.

Immediately, Sara grabbed the dagger and slid it up her sleeve. “Then let’s get the rest of this and get out of here.”

He raised an eyebrow at her in amusement. “Yeah?”

“As if I don’t understand why it’s better to clean Savage out as much as possible,” she said.

Of course Sara understood. He was sure she had understood back then but they’d been on separate missions the first time around so Sara hadn’t had a chance to say anything about it. 

“Let’s clear this out,” Leonard said. Grateful that he’d thought to get a couple of backpacks that he and Mick had worn under their jackets to keep the others from asking questions, he took off his jacket and swung the backpack off his shoulders, smirking when Sara laughed and began gathering the items closest to her.

“Ms. Lance,” Gideon said. “Vandal Savage has just gotten in his car and seems to be heading back home. You have approximately thirty-two minutes to get out of there and back to the ship.”

Sara glanced at Leonard. “Let’s finish this up. Gideon just let me know that Savage is on his way back. We’ve got about a half an hour.”

Leonard swore lightly and began to grab what he could. “We better hurry. I don’t even know if Mick’s found the safe yet.”

Rather than answering, Sara added a few smaller items to her pockets. It didn’t take long before they’d filled their pockets as well as the backpack with things from that room and the next. Glancing at his watch, Leonard blew out a breath. Almost ten minutes had passed.

“Almost ten minutes gone,” he told Sara. “Let’s find Mick.” He briefly considered the comms to find his partner but decided against it. The second he mentioned the safe, the others would start in on them and it’d be distracting. 

Apparently Sara was on the same wavelength as he was since she simply nodded and headed in the direction that Mick had gone. Leonard, on the other hand, went in the direction that he remembered Savage and Mick coming from the last time. He was certain that Mick had either found the safe or he’d been surprised while looking after finding nothing in the other direction.

He smirked when he found Mick a couple rooms over. He loved being right.

“Find the safe?” he asked.

Mick glanced over. “Good timing, Boss. Just found it in here.” He nodded at the panel he’d just pulled back and then glanced behind him. “Where’s Blondie?”

“We split up to look for you. Gideon gave us the heads up. Savage is on his way back,” Leonard told him.

Mick nodded. “You’re faster at cracking safes than I am. I’ll go get Blondie,” he said, dropping his backpack on the floor near the safe.

Leonard nodded at him and moved forward as Mick left the room. He studied the safe and then shook his head. “Well, this is almost insulting.”

“What is?” Sara asked from behind him. 

He glanced over his shoulder at her and Mick. “This safe.” He shook his head and looked back at it. He knew they were in the 70s but he would have expected Savage to have something much more sophisticated considering that the man had been alive for thousands of years.

Then again, after being alive that long, he probably wasn’t expecting anyone to break in and rob him. At least, he amended thinking of the security measures they’d already bypassed, not anyone with experience.

Smirk firmly in place, he went to work on the safe. It took him less than a minute but still longer than he’d expected. “Getting rusty,” he muttered as he pulled open the door. He paused as he saw what was in there.

“There’s barely any money in there,” Mick said with a frown.

“But that paperwork might be useful later so let’s take the money and the papers and get the hell out of here,” Sara said. She unzipped Mick’s backpack and held it open.

“Excellent point,” Leonard said, scooping the bundles of cash into the backpack before putting the folders full of paper in there as well. He raised an eyebrow when he saw a rectangle velvet box. Grabbing it, he flipped it open and smirked when he saw the bracelet that had once belonged to Kendra and would have belonged to Cassandra Savage in the future. “Perfect.” He tossed the box in the backpack and closed the safe, replacing the panel, as Sara zipped up the backpack and held it up to Mick.

“You want to carry it or should I?” she asked.

He eyed her and then took it, swinging it over his shoulder. “Think we’re both good at fighting while holding something,” he said. “But I’d rather carry it.”

She nodded, unoffended. “Not a problem for me,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Mick grabbed a letter opener with a jeweled handle and shoved it in his pocket. “Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of here, Boss, Blondie.”

Leonard glanced at his watch. “With time to spare. We’ve got less than fifteen minutes.” 

On the way out, Mick took them by the fuse box. Resetting it would put everything back to the original security features and give them only thirty seconds to get out of the house. Thankfully, they were near a window and could just climb out rather than having to run for the door. While Mick was starting to reset the system, Sara ran back and locked the front door, returning within seconds. Leonard shoved the window open and nodded as Sara climbed out. 

“Go,” Mick ordered, slamming the fuse box shut and slamming the room’s door shut behind him as he ran out. He climbed through the window and nodded as Leonard climbed out right behind him, yanking the window shut. Without another word, the three of them took off running, heading for the woods. It would be simple enough to circle back to the Waverider once they were out of sight.

As they ran up the ramp of the ship, Sara looked at Rip. “You might want to get us into the time stream. Savage will be home in about five minutes.”

Rip stared at the three of them in shock before glancing at the rest of the team. “You heard Ms. Lance. Strap in!”

Everyone burst into movement, dropping into their seats as Rip turned back to the controls. 

Moments later, they were gone.

~*~*~

Rip spun his chair to face them as they all stood and pushed himself out of his seat. “May I ask why it required two backpacks to steal one dagger?”

Ray’s jaw dropped. “You guys robbed him?”

Mick raised an eyebrow. “That was the point, Haircut.”

“Besides,” Leonard said, “it’s Savage.”

Martin eyed each of them in turn. “Why did you decide to rob him?” He paused. “Other than the fact that he’s the villain we’re trying to defeat, I mean.”

Sara smiled. She had been right. Rather than condemning them, Martin was starting to think that there was more to them than just wanting to get a good score. She glanced at Leonard and then turned to look at the others, speaking to all of them instead of just Martin.

“If we had stolen the dagger only, then we might as well have just hung up a neon sign that said we were working with Kendra and Carter. He’d know exactly who had taken it. And, honestly, he’ll probably still figure it out. But this buys a bit of time. He’s going to go in there and see that the entire room has been cleared out. If we’re lucky, he’ll continue to believe that he just got robbed by someone who got lucky,” she explained.

Martin smiled. “Because if he thinks that, he thinks that the dagger is simply missing somewhere in his year. He doesn’t suspect that Kendra and Carter have gotten their hands on it.”

“Instead,” Kendra said, “he would think that he just has to track it down again.”

“And he’s so arrogant that he’ll assume it’ll be easy to do,” Carter added. He nodded at the three of them. “Thank you.”

Leonard nodded at him. “And even better, we got into his safe. There was some papers that we didn’t get to look through but we thought they might be useful.” He motioned towards Mick for the other backpack. Mick glanced at the others and handed it over so that Leonard could take out the papers and hand them over to Rip. “You might find something in there.” He looked over at Kendra and Carter, reaching in for the box and tossing it at them. “And in there, is something shiny that looks like it probably fit in perfectly in Ancient Egypt.”

Kendra looked between the box and Carter before nodding. At that, Carter opened the box and Kendra sucked in a breath.

“That was mine,” she whispered. “I was wearing it when we died.”

“Not sure what could be done with a bracelet,” Leonard said, remembering how they’d melted it down before. “But you never know when that might come in handy.”

“Thank you,” Carter repeated, his gratitude clear.

“These papers...” Rip said in astonishment. He looked up from the folder he’d been flipping through. “There’s records of Savage’s accounts, contacts...”

“Think you can do something with those, English?” Mick asked.

“Mr. Rory,” Rip breathed as he stared at the papers, “I think we might be able to figure out how Savage gained so much power with these.”

Jax grinned. “So we might win a little faster with those, huh?”

Ray looked over at Leonard and Mick before glancing at Sara. “Looks like you guys were exactly what this team needed.” His eyes flicked back over to Leonard and Mick. “I’m sorry. For not trusting you.”

Mick shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Leonard smirked. “You’ll learn to love us, Raymond.”

Ray grinned and looked away. “We’ll see.”

~*~*~

“So, that’s what it’s like to have the team’s trust,” Leonard said as he sprawled across the bottom half of her bed the way he had so many times before. “I’m not sure I like it.”

Sara rolled her eyes and fought back a smile at his antics. “Liar.”

He tilted his head, one corner of his mouth lifting in a half smile. “Most of the time.”

She shook her head as she settled on the bed next to him, crossing her legs. “We need to figure out our next steps,” she said, turning her head to meet his gaze. 

Leonard let out a breath. “I know.” He hesitated and then met Sara’s eyes. “Gideon, do the Time Masters have a bounty hunter that goes by the alias Chronos?”

“They do, Mr. Snart,” Gideon confirmed. Leonard closed his eyes at the thought that he hadn’t changed a damn thing for Mick.

“I can’t believe this is the bright side but it might not be Mick. It might be someone else,” Sara said. “We have no way of knowing if it’s him or not.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “I can’t believe I find that comforting.”

She blew out a breath. “Yeah, that’s the kicker. We have to hope someone has been kidnapped by the Time Masters and turned into Chronos while making sure it’s not Mick.”

Leonard stared at her for a few moments. “You think we can do this, Sara?”

She met his gaze head on. “I think we have to.” Slowly, she reached out, pausing halfway between them. She waited until he slid his hand into hers. “One of the first things we need to do is figure out something to hold down the failsafe at the Oculus.”

Leonard’s hand tightened around hers. “Because unless that paperwork reveals that the Time Masters are working with Savage or we find a way for Rip to discover it beforehand, we’re going to end up back there and having to destroy it again. Time wants to happen.”

Sara nodded. “I’d really like you to survive that this time around,” she said.

His lips twitched. “Yeah, me too.”

Sara stared at their hands for a few moments, determination flowing through her, before she lifted her eyes to meet Leonard’s and found the same determination she felt reflected back at her. They had both wished that things had ended differently the first time around.

Saving Carter’s life had already changed things to the point that they wouldn’t be able to entirely predict how things would go. Already, it meant that Savage would be weaker because he wouldn’t be able to use Carter’s soul in the ritual that he had before in order to give him strength. There was no way to know how preventing Carter’s death would change future missions.

Now, all they could do was plan for the possibilities and hope that it would be enough.


End file.
